User Profile

I just realized it's time for me to update this.

Welcome to the viaduct™ (the style for this journal is that the title is always in lowercase). I started this journal June 1, 2004 because I'd been writing down my random thoughts for years and stashing them away like Emily Dickinson (but, unlike Emily Dickinson, I do leave my house and you can't sing any of my posts to “Yellow Rose of Texas” ... I think). I figured that I might as well put my life on display like everyone else. Besides, if I ever decide to run for public office, I shouldn't have anything to hide this way.

In 2004, I had just moved into my fraternity house (not only was I one of the founders of the chapter, I was also one of the first tenants of the house) and was about to start my senior year in college. That senior year basically lasted two years (I blame turning 21). Eventually, in a convoluted chain of events, I technically got my diploma two months AFTER starting my professional career and here we are now.

In this journal, you'll see the chronicles of a real journalist (i.e. I work in the mostly dying newspaper industry) transitioning from college life with enough alcohol to kill a herd of elephants to being an adult where weekend excitement would come from doing laundry if not for the fact that my life is incredibly random to the point where, if not for my friends being there, I wouldn't even believe some of my stories.

For a couple months in late 2008/early 2009, I was technically homeless because I was pretending to live with my mom, who lives about 60 miles away from my job. I now live in a small house near the James River on the south side of Richmond. Also in 2009, I purchased exit265c.com, which will soon grow from a mirror site for the main page to one that does stuff. The first step is to figure out how to do Web design and get a place to host the site. Once I get that all squared away, I'll most likely completely move this journal there but I'll keep this up so no one takes the name and does who knows what. I'm thinking I'll take me a year or so to get to that point but just get in the habit of going to the Web site.

What else ... I'm an award-winning journalist and author (literary contest hosted by my university and a statewide newspaper competition) in a small city in central Virginia. This part of the metro area literally has a million people less than where I grew up but I'm dealing. It's a lot easier to deal with it when I go home to the state capital, Richmond, every night.

As for my job down in southern fringes of the capital metro area, I was a reporter at the region's second daily paper (which didn't cover Richmond itself) for nearly three years and covered over 780 square miles. That got old. I am now the managing editor of a twice-weekly newspaper down the street from my old job and I might get a second undergrad degree at some point.

If you're familiar with his work, I'm like a combination of Wayne Johnston's Joseph Smallwood and Sheilagh Fielding but I think I'm a lot crazier. These adventures are starting to get old, though. It might be because I'm starting to march toward 30. Or because I don't seek out these antics; they just happen.

What else ... I tend to have good grammar, not post memes, not write fan fiction or even mention Japanese cartoons (although I'm had a brief stint as the editor of an anime Web site before I realized I had too much on my plate). I also like taking pictures when my camera doesn't eat batteries as if they were babies. I also like to take pictures when my camera isn't stolen in New Jersey or breaks when it falls less than five feet. I've gone through three cameras under those two scenarios.

Feel free to add me as your LJ friend UNLESS you:
don't have a real journal with real entries;
are selling something/pitching some sort of scheme;
are a serial adder;
have a program that adds people for you;
have grammar that would make even the hardiest English majors vomit;
don't have the common courtesy to ask to be added so I at least know you are reading; and
have the sole purpose of being inflammatory and/or running some sociology experiment.