With great power...

It was late February, 1996, and I was feeling on top of the world.
I'd just been named editor of the Marshfield Mariner, and I was going out
to celebrate with my friends. My favorite band -- Beat Soup -- was playing
at John Harvard's, and almost everyone -- Kristen, Alicia, Trish, Chuanyi,
even Stephanie, I think -- had come to wish me well. I'd had a few drinks,
had a few laughs, stepped onto the dance floor for the first time since my
sophomore semi-formal, and in general, felt pretty pleased with myself:
two years out of college, and I'd become the hotshot young editor of the
flagship newspaper of the Mariner chain. Life was good.

And then -- I don't remember at exactly what point that evening, but
I do remember that it happened -- it struck me: this wasn't about me anymore.
Everything in my career, up until that point, had been about me: beating out
the competition for my job as a reporter, scooping the other newspapers and
media outlets on a story, getting my byline on the front page, scoring the
promotion to editor. I'd tried to be a good reporter, at least for the
duration of each story, but at the end of the day I'd go home, and leave
Marshfield to take care of itself.

All of that changed when I became an editor. Suddenly, all of these
people I'd never heard of were depending on me to tell them the story of
their town on a weekly basis. I had to learn their names, learn their
history, so that I would understand why they felt the way they did about
the construction of a downtown sewer line, or know what to ask when
investigating a police corruption scandal, or feel the tension in my
stomach as another prom and graduation season approached and all of us
hoped we'd get out of it, this year, without anyone's children wrapping
their cars around trees, and how we all came together when, every year,
they did. My promotion became their paper, and their town became my home.

Last Saturday night, I walked into O'Brien's for another Beat Soup
show, another celebration. I was alone, this time -- the people I knew in
'96 had moved away, gotten married, or grown too old to stay out past
midnight in bars like O'Brien's -- and Dan, the lead singer, had gone from
being someone I worshipped like a god to... not someone I know, exactly,
but someone I can talk to. I asked him about his kids, he asked me about my
students, and we talked for a while about this and that, but mostly about
writing.

"The time I knew I'd become a writer," Dan said, "was the first time
I realized I'd written a song that wasn't about me. Everything I'd written
up until that point was the same thing -- my problems, my view of the world
-- and suddenly, here was this song, and it wasn't about me, and I knew
I'd really created something."

I thought about that for a long time after the last song had ended
("Time Is Not Money," the same song that had brought me onto the dance floor
for the first time back in '96.) I've been given an opportunity, something
special, something I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to do. I used to look at
opportunities like this -- interviewing astronauts and rock stars, going
to the Oscars, being invited to speak, having the chance to teach -- as
just my good fortune. But Fortune, I've found, doesn't smile on everyone.
When I'm listening to one of my community college students talking about
the amount of work she's put in to one of my papers despite a crisis at
work and a four-year-old who's sick and an abusive boyfriend who won't go
away -- and I think about how much I have, and how little I've done to
deserve it, I can come to only three conclusions: either there's no one
running the universe after all, or whoever it is has a really sick sense of
humor, or that I've been given what I've been given for a reason, and it
isn't to make me feel good about myself.

I don't know what it is I'm supposed to do, or how I'm supposed to
do it, or whether I'll even know when I've accomplished it. I do know that
it probably doesn't involve building up my CD collection, wooing women with
witty remarks, or spending another six years trying to get on Beat Soup's
guest list, which means a change of my priorities is probably in order. It
can't be about me. That's all I know. And maybe, right now, that's enough.