An update from Springfield
I don’t attribute all the difficulties we had in the Great Boston Experiment to living in Marlborough, but a lot of the reason we struggled is because we lived so far from the city and Marlborough was far from our New England dreams.
Life has improved significantly since we left Marlborough (and the Boston area) back in February. We moved into a gorgeous house with plenty of room , two separate fenced off yards for the dogs and some very lovely neighbors. To top it off, I’m no longer a waiter, as I’m a full-time reporter for the Hartford Business Journal. I’m utterly convinced I never would have gotten that job if we were still in Marlborough.
When I left my steady Florida paycheck for the tumultuous life of a freelancer in Boston, I had gotten pretty fed up with a lot of things about the corporate culture and business mindset of newspapers. I felt like a wage slave struggling to bring any significance to my professional life. Becoming a freelancer at first felt like bursting free of those bonds into some wonderful new beginning.
The 18 months of the Great Boston Experiment humbled me. I became a better husband, father, reporter and person because of it, but my feelings toward the corporate system certainly changed. The change didn’t happen all at once, but it was very gradual. It started when the Boston Globe cut me off, and I gave up on being a freelancer full time. Every order I took as a waiter and every nasty customer who forced me to bit my lip pushed me a little further. When I was with the Patriot Ledger, I realized I was no longer a corporate rebel as I was doing the same job as I had in Florida, only for less money, worse hours and no respect.
I love my new job at the Hartford Business Journal and feel refreshed by it. They are certainly many tenants of the corporate culture — suit and tie, required hours, productivity demands, casual dress days, community junk food — but I feel much more at peace with my new company than I ever did in my final year with the Naples Daily News. Maybe it’s not the system, it could be that some companies are just better than others. Or it could just be me, and how I decide to approach the various facets of my life.
Some lessons learned from the Great Boston Experiment:
- bucking the system takes hard, persistent work and quite a bit of luck and support
- you can choose to be a corporate drone or a productive, positive worker
- some companies are better than others, and it’s better to work for a good one
- working as a waiter is a great way for a steady stream of cash, but over the long run it starts to eat at your soul (at least it did with me)
- some of the finest people in the world work in the restaurant and service industry. Seriously, I worked with some waiters and managers that could run laps around most reporters and editors I’ve known.
- some of the worst people in the world work in the restaurant and service industry
- having a wife and a family that supports you in the most difficult of times is more important than everything else
- it’s important to always to cognizant and grateful for the positives in your life, even when it may seem like your struggling
- Lastly, Boston still rules, but Marlboro freaking sucks
August 14, 2010 at 12:14 am
i enjoyed reading your posts very much. i grew up in new england and have lived in flori-duh for way too long. i’m over whatever “it” was that caused me to point the car south and drive until the road went no farther. in the beginning everything was so different and i did enjoy south florida very much. but by ’87 the unrelenting influx of people and constant development in just disgusted me. i moved to the gainesville area, raised my son, and tried to make the best of my mistaken assumption there would be more intelligent, interesting, educated people here because of the university.
my life is finally mine again, my obligations are few, and i have decided to move to boston in the spring. i miss new england, my boyfriend is there, and i’m lucky to have an income, ironically, of $30000 unrelated to any job. hopefully i can find a small place north of the city along the shore. maybe i’m just dreaming but i’m going to give it a shot.
thank you for your insightful and interesting posts.
-sadie