Woo-Hoo Wednesdays

I surprised myself when I told a friend that I don't call myself a journalist.

I mean, it's in our blood, isn't it? With 25 years in newspapers, it is in mine.

It's been a year since I was laid off from the San Jose Mercury News, where I had, by turns, been an editor, reporter and metro columnist for 11 years. Yet I sign my e-mail correspondence 'Writer, Researcher, Consultant.' That's what I do nowadays.

It's been a full year of adjustments since I wrote the first 'Woo-Hoo Wednesdays' column, promising regular dispatches on my exploration into the world of reinvention. I'd imagined reporting on my frequent Wednesday gatherings with my reporter, photographer and graphic artist friends. Of sharing handy tips, run-ins with bureaucracy and perhaps, great insights from bartenders (free at last from the morning newspaper cycle, that is, to go to a 'Happy Hour.')

Alas, my editor departed and I behaved like most reporters without a deadline. I became preoccupied with other things. Another editor has shown up, courtesy of the great newspaper diaspora of 2009.

I've discovered a lot these many months.

I ponied up money to attend the BlogHer conference, multimedia training workshops, UNITY, and the Journalism That Matters Conference on the Yahoo campus. I plunged into research work for the Chauncey Bailey Project's website, ran the awards contest for the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, wrote a local election story for a crowd-funded project on Spot.US, did market research for the non-profit Center for Renaissance Journalism, freelanced for my alma mater's alumnae magazine, signed on to a project for the California Media Collaborative, and even wrote a few advertorials."

And then there were the things that scare everyone about being unemployed. I fought for months with the company administering my Cobra health benefits, alarmed by letters announcing my termination (in error), enduring endless go-nowhere calls in attempts to fix it, imploring my ex-company's beleaguered human resources department to help.

There were mysterious communications from the state office handling my unemployment benefits, ones that I feared meant getting checks held up or stopped.

For a long stretch, I was practicing no journalism. And that's when it hit me last fall: Why was I just standing there, doing nothing, during the most exciting presidential elections of my lifetime?

I packed up and went to Nevada for the final week of the election to canvas for Barack Obama's campaign. I hadn't knocked on doors and walked all day, day after day, for a candidate since college.

I reveled in being an ordinary civilian. Whatever was in my blood, technically, I wasn't a journalist. I had no newspaper, no freelance reporting jobs. I was liberated from the rules governing my professional conduct. I was a self-employed consultant, going from contract to contract.

In January, I joined the throngs of people trying to get to the U.S. Capitol in the freezing cold for the swearing in of the 44th president. I could celebrate a historic day like anybody else.

As the economy has tanked, and more journalists -- and everyone else -- joined the unemployment ranks, it's been a lot less lonely in that status. After months of thinking I was going to get a 'real' job with a paycheck, I declared a home office. I filed a Schedule C with my income tax.

It's really a frame of mind. Right now, I'm content with Writer, Researcher, Consultant. There's always another comma and a descriptor I could add. Perhaps tomorrow.