I love my job because the four walls of my office aren’t these off-white pegboard walls, a former darkroom and a door frame with no door (I should install a saloon door, huh?) The real walls are the Nottoway River, State Route 288, Fort Pickett and the Surry County line.

Between those walls, almost everything is fair game for capture with my trusty Nikons for our newspaper, The Progress-Index.

It goes without saying that every day is different in journalism. Will I wind up triple-booked at 5 p.m.?

Am I under-dressed for a meeting with the governor? (Nah. That’s what the jacket in my car is for!) Will I go to bed pondering about the fate of a shooting victim?

Last week, I followed a farmer through fields of drought-stricken crops; donned a life vest and rode in a john boat to a national wildlife refuge to meet a group of high schoolers and science teachers on a week-long canoe trip; played paparazzi (a polite one, albeit) when a movie crew came to town; visited training units at the local army base, including soldiers loading a massive C-17 plane; spent an hour in 95-degree temps at a fatal accident scene; and let’s not forget the opening game of the big youth baseball tournament.

I enjoy the challenge of busy days and challenging myself on the slow ones. There are just so many stories these four walls hold.

Nikons in hand, Pat Kane covers the stories of the Tri-Cities of Virginia as multimedia editor of The (Petersburg) Progress-Index. Pat joined the Virginia Pro Chapter Board in 2008, stepping up to serve as chapter secretary the following year. After growing up all over the globe as a Navy brat, Pat graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007 after working four years at The Commonwealth Times. 140-character insights are available @kane804.

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This entry was posted by Patrick Kane on Wednesday, September 12th, 2012 at 4:14 am and is filed under Careers, Gen J, Gen Jers, Generation J, Job, Journalism, new media, news, newsroom, SPJ, Tips, Why I Love my Job, young journalists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.