The days and on-air shifts began to tick by pretty quickly and it was feeling more and more comfortable to be in the broadcast facility building, a place I’d once held in the same esteemed category of spots like Gettysburg, or St Mark’s Square or the Pentagon… in my mind I was adjusting to a higher standard. It wasn’t all roses and clover, but the challenges were to me fun tasks as opposed to daunting chores, and I attacked them head on.

I had this strangely great feeling like I was building something, not like a house or bridge, but like the feeling you get when you finally have a blooming garden or hedgerow, I was expanding and it was awesome! My solid belief, for perhaps the first time in my life was that I had found my place in the working world. I couldn’t wait to do another air shift; I couldn’t wait for the next commercial script; I couldn’t wait to see how to make a fast spoken thought faster, and more funny, and more entertaining… I was learning and loving it!

One afternoon while doing the next evenings overnight voice-track shift, the Operations Manager: J.R. we’ll call him, sauntered into the small production room where I was, and leaned hard on the console I was working on. “So… it seems like you’re doing great things here for WKRZ” he stated, (his voice a bit “affected” while he spoke, DJ’s often do that without noticing). “Would you be interested in full time work if we were to tap your into talents for a new station we’re considering putting on air in the near future?” he continued. Now, this was an interesting question for me to have been asked.

Several things crossed my mind almost all at once:

a) Did he think I was going to be uninterested in a full time gig?

b) Did my willingness to do the worst jobs in the building (sans scrubbing the commode) not make it apparently obvious that I wanted to be a full time DJ?

c) Why even ask me, why not just draw up the paperwork and show me to my desk already?

d) Would anyone on God’s green earth really turn down a rare offer of this magnitude?

e) Really!!

I was baffled.

“Yes, of course I’d love to be considered for the full time spot” I chirped back. “I’d love it” I reiterated. Now, it’s worth mentioning here that in spite of the fact that I was 35, I actually felt, and sort of really was, a newbie/intern. I also felt that if I went into any meeting, conversation, task or actually ANY aspect of this new job pursuit, with that fresh faced- kinda naivete about me, that I would achieve more than the others who’d been jaded by their years on this earth… and it was working. Note: Try acting like this for one hour today (seeing the world through a child’s eyes) it’ll shock you what you’ll begin to perceive differently.

I finished my work, bagged my headphones and headed for my car, all the while knowing that I had attained the respect of broadcast pros, one of which that had now told me that I was about to have a full-time future in the very business that I’d wanted to be in my entire life. It felt great. I’d build something, the base of a career, and it was about to pay off…