No doubt about it, the OnMilwaukee.com editors enjoy their work, but like all professionals, there will always be a road or roads not taken.
It's a tough question, but if forced to give up writing, here's what the staff might do as an alternative career. Think about it: what's your professional "plan B?"
Colleen Jurkiewicz
Staff writer
We recently had a long, nerdy conversation in the editorial room about my Plan B career. When I was in college I had originally planned on getting a degree in history and going on for a master's or Ph.D. in museum studies. I was especially interested in colonial American history and I wanted to work for a "living museum" like Monticello or Colonial Williamsburg or for a non-profit that promoted historic preservation. (The plan for my thesis project was to find out what happened to the lost colony of Roanoke – because I'm totally sure I could succeed where four centuries of other historians and archaeologists have failed. Totally sure.) But, the heart wants what it wants. History is still my greatest passion apart from writing, and I literally plan no vacations that do not involve at least one day at some kind of battlefield, museum, dead president's house or place where people dress up and churn butter.
Eugene Kane
Senior writer
I'd be in entertainment because it's the one thing a self-absorbed opinion writer could probably relate to after all these years. As always the funniest guy in the room, I could be the stand-up comedian who hones his material in Vegas or smaller markets for years before breaking big on Late Night.
Jim Owczarski
Sports editor
I'd be a white collar investigator/work surveillance for the FBI or CIA. I have a degree in Sociology, so I've been fascinated by people (and their behaviors) forever. And, I put that to use by working loss prevention for a large retailer for 10 years. I loved watching someone get ready to steal, then catching them in the act, making the bust, all that stuff. But, I never had any interest in on-the-ground law enforcement. I could never wrap my head around being shot for pulling someone over with a broken taillight. But, ask me to crawl up into a wall or ceiling to lay wiring and hide a pin camera to catch someone stealing? Work the third shift four days in a row watching said pin cam? I'd do that all day, every day.
Molly Snyder
Senior writer
I started writing poems and short stories when I was four. By the time I was 10, I was submitting my work to local newspapers – the now-defunct Shorewood Herald printed my riveting poem "The Unicorn" and I was hooked on publishing. Writing, however, can be lonely work. Usually I enjoy the alone time, with my thoughts and keyboard, but it can be very isolating. I really like people and hearing their stories, so perhaps I would have made a good talk show host. I have done a fair share of radio and television, and always enjoyed the work. I may have even felt little surges of envy while watching "Oprah."
I also inherited my father's academic gene, I think, and could easily go back to graduate school and read and write and teach poetry and fiction for the rest of my life. If money were no object, of course. But which, of course, it is.
Bobby Tanzilo
Managing editor
I didn't have a plan B. Heck, I didn't even have a plan A, which is a bit how I ended up doing what I do. I was going to major in history but when I complained about a story in the UWM Post littered with errors, they said, "you write it better, then." So, I did, and here we are. In grade school I always wanted to be a baseball player. By high school I was more interested in being a full-time musician. But if I was any good at those things, I'd be doing them now. So, maybe I'm living already plan B.
Things I think I might enjoy doing? World class architect. Celebrated chef. Skilled winemaker. Swashbuckling post-Impressionist painter living in fin de siecle Paris. Would I do them if I wasn't writing? Not likely and in that last case, surely not, having been born a century too late. Something I could see myself being interested in doing is working, not as a teacher (kids would walk all over me; I'm a pushover), but perhaps in some other capacity to help improve public education.
Andy Tarnoff
Publisher
This was a particularly difficult assignment for me, since I literally created my current job as a mash up of all my skills and talents in 1998. But if I wasn’t at OnMilwaukee.com and hadn’t pursued a track in journalism and communications, I wonder if I would’ve fallen back on what I thought I’d be when I was thinking about this as a child: an architect. I stopped going down that path when I heard that there wouldd be math, but despite my challenge in understanding spatial relations, I do enjoy design, both from an aesthetic and practical side. Maybe I would’ve been some sort of design/built consultant, looking at colors and shapes and how they all fit together in an eco-friendly, Feng shui sort of way. Or ... maybe I would’ve been a shepherd. That sounds pretty good, actually.
