in that life.

2 March 2026|Omaha – the broadcast journalism decades win “most interesting years” in my  humdinger-of-a-life so far. 

if i’d had more sense, i’d have switched my major to journalism in college and climbed that ladder in some sequence of cities. even in that life it would have likely been a “black press” junket. i’d have discovered radio in university,  interned at BET back in the glory days and ended up somewhere in major market radio or teevee, likely producing. in that life today i’d be fighting for my job as a news director or senior correspondent somewhere riding the the learning curve of monetizing viewers or listeners into clicks and streams.

in that life, i could’ve listened to Pearl. against her powerful persuasion I’d have finished Oakwood as something other than a theologian, but still ended up globetrotting for GC or NAD communications. At this stage in that life I’d be probably strategizing for Breath of Life, or pressuring Message Magazine to be more attached to its black nationalist roots. 

Lucky for us, in that life your faithful editor did not have more sense. 

also, in that life i did not follow my mother's plan. 

I opted for a third door. Sitting in a required religion class at Union College, I convinced myself I should join the Air Force and be on teevee. Figured I could skip some steps and in that life i’d find an anchor desk to keep following the news – a passion I'd picked up as a young child.

The wisdom of a 17 year old.
Cut me some slack. I was in that life.

dB used to describe the intentionality it takes to move from wanting something to having that same something. 

I thought about that a lot in the marathon there.
And in that life the aesthetics were beautiful. beaches and world-famous mascots, but the tolls on those Florida roads climbed and climbed and climbed almost every day of the journey in that life.

For a shot at the championship I had to break a heart. The trophy reminded me what I did in that life this morning.

In that life i became a godfather under one waxing moon and watched a man die before the next. And then i hit the lottery. The fine print said I had to cut the cord to everything I knew to claim the check. In that life i used an abacus to calculate my formula for how to catch up to a dream that has a head start.

my DD-214 says it took three years, five months to catch that wave off the beach. one thousand two hundred forty eight days in that life. And a wake-up.

Then one particular pre-dawn, in that life, I was sitting at a radio control board wearing BDUs and combat boots, sliding up the potentiometer labeled MIC1.

March. 1994. 

Mama, I’m on the radio.