Another Friday, another week gone.

I went out to the bar tonight to partake in the "Welcome to Easton" event for our new reporter and left with a heightened sense of frustration at my situation.

The frustration came from two sources largely: Things don't look particularly good for my future in journalism; and my boss's outlook on his career isn't going to help things.

First, our new reporter has been in a Kafkaesque sort of downward spiral that doesn't give me much confidence. She went from Yale to Wall Street to Columbia to two well respected newspapers to the AP and then got laid off. Now she's working in Easton.

Second, my boss told me tonight that he's pretty much waiting out the clock until social security will kick in to supplement his pension from the shoe sales business. Frankly, I've known the guy for four years and worked for him for a month and it's no surprise to me that he doesn't give a shite about his work. For the last two years the most profitable thing he's done is sort silver half dollars out of stacks he gets from the bank. Now that management put the kibosh on that, he spends most of his day playing some Mah Jong derivative on the Web. He sees himself as a first line of defense against run on sentences. Nothing more.

This comes after two years of working with an editor who works intensely with reporters to develop stories, jumps into the fray herself when the shit goes down and is motivated to get out of here herself.

I've recently been given the primo beat here, but my own hesitation in jumping on that and my boss's indiference toward anything beyond grammar have left me without a mentor. The last owner of the Northampton County beat hightailed it out of here to greener pastures in the Chicagoland area. Good for him.

But it leaves me without a clue. And no offfense Agitator, but your filing system is incomprehensible.

Arrgh! But I'll figure it out.

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On the other hand, I'm psyched about my smugmug account. It's inspired me to take more photos. There's not a great deal there now, but I'll work on getting more material there soon. Check back for updates.