With a little kelp from my friends

Our friend Miriam has concluded her old blog, Eat, Drink and be Miriam, and started a brand new one, Hope Yourself. She'll be dishing out ample servings of food reports and recipes for life (without adding a pinch of cliche, unlike me). Her opening entry explains:

I gave my notice at work this week, and it's hard not to feel relieved.

I've worked as a journalist for almost four years, but I'd been preparing for a reporting career for nearly a decade. I thought reporting would be a great way to help communities improve and encourage activism. I still think journalism is an immensely important job and that local papers play very necessary roles. I've been lucky to work at two locally owned newspapers, one in Brunswick, Georgia, and another in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

But I've come to believe that journalism isn't the career for me. I've found reporters to be so afraid of being labeled "biased" that they avoid sharing an opinion on anything, on the job or off. Too often, I've seen reporters and editors hide behind a claim to be objective, when they're actually showing a lack of compassion or concern. I don't want to lose my capacities for empathy and compassion, and I'm afraid that staying in this job will make holding on to those habits difficult.

So I'm off to try something new.