Half my life
I just noticed today's date: Feb. 9. On this date in 1986 was the first appearance of a story under my byline in a professional newspaper.

I was hired by the Anytown Daily Bugle in early February 1986 to take sports scores on the phone part-time. My job was to answer the phone, transcribe results from area sporting events and put them in the newspaper, in the small type called "agate." My second day on the job was a Friday night, the busiest night of the week, when all the high school basketball teams are playing. Because I hit the wrong button -- I "copied" my scores into a computer queue instead of "transferring" them -- every result I took that night wound up in the paper twice. Oops.

Also that night, the sports editor assigned me a story. I was to cover the conference high school wrestling tournament the next afternoon. Another sports writer told me, "They just want to get an idea of how you write." I took that to mean the assignment was just for practice, not for publication. Feeling no pressure, I went to a tournament -- the first time I had ever watched wrestling -- interviewed a friend of mine who won his weight class, went back to the office and wrote the story.

"Nice job," said the sports editor. "Thanks."

Imagine my surprise the next morning when my stepmother's father, in town visiting from St. Louis, looked up from the paper and said, "Hey, nice story on that wrestling tournament."

I ran over and grabbed the paper from him, and there it was -- my "practice" story. To this day, I remember that the typo "dowmplayed" made it into the paper.

I ended up writing a lot more stories and doing a lot less "agate" than the other agate clerks. I was too dumb to know I had any talent at all; I just wrote what felt right and it made its way into the paper more often than not. Despite the fact that I was 17 years old, I considered myself every bit the sportswriter that anybody else on the staff was. I didn't know any better.

I worked as hard as I could, and then some. I worked way more than 40 hours most weeks, despite being "part-time." I accepted assignments nobody else would. Whenver something involved driving across the state, I signed up. I did all this during the day and stuck around at night to answer phones. Basically, I worked my ass off.

Two years later, the "part-time" tag was removed. At 20, I had a job that many, many others spent years in college and enduring internships to earn.

Nearly a year later, I was on the verge of losing it. I received probably the worst performance review my boss -- known for being soft on performance issues -- had ever delivered. He said it was obvious that without the carrot of a full-time job being dangled in front of me, I had mutated into an unqualified slacker. Really, I was guilty of nothing more than being 21, but he was right. I had convinced myself that I was so damn good at what I did that I could do it at 40 percent of my capability and still be fine. The boss, in no uncertain terms, made it clear that was not the case.

It basically saved my career.

In that performance review, in a calmer moment, we also noted that I had some weaknesses as a reporter. I had to agree with that. Part of it was the aforementioned lack of maturity. Part of it was my natural inclination to avoid conflict. I wasn't really one to ask tough questions.

At the time, we had no copy editors on our sports staff; the sports editor and his assistant did most of the production work, with help from whichever writer was in the office at the time. A newfangled production concept called "pagination" -- in which pages were built on a computer screen and output as one piece -- was coming down the pike. The boss asked me if I was interested in learning how to be a "paginator." He gave me a book, "The Newspaper Designer's Handbook." He said, "Read it and tell me if you think you can do that." He didn't say, I hope you can, 'cause that's the only way you're going to keep your job. He didn't have to.

That's how I morphed from sportswriter to newspaper designer.

It turned out that I had above-average skill as a designer, despite not having had any formal training. That, along with my above-average technical skill and my renewed work ethic, helped me to become the assistant sports editor three years later, and into a succession of better jobs after that.

That sports editor in 1989 reminded me that I wasn't entitled to anything. Yeah, I'm reasonably OK at what I do. But it's not enough. I firmly believe that attitude is more important than talent. I try like hell to be a living, breathing example of that.

As of this week, I've been a professional journalist for half my life. I have no idea if I've accomplished anything. In this business, the only thing that matters is what's in today's paper, because tomorrow, it'll be lining the litter box. The term "body of work" is fairly meaningless to most journalists.

But I hope it on some level it matters. After all, it has been half my life.