Furlough journal, Day 5: contemplating the future

In her final day of this month’s furlough, a longtime education reporter wonders what it will be like returning to work on Monday, and eventually to a real-life newsroom.

I had a dream last night. It took place in the newsroom, the old newsroom with the floor-to- ceiling windows, the blown-up photographs of the day JFK died, the Blizzard of ‘78, the moon landing.

In that dream, the newsroom was noisy, every desk was occupied.

My desk, as usual, was a hot mess of reporters’ notebooks, task force reports and pens that no longer worked.

Today, the last day of my furlough, I’m thinking of what it will be like to return to a bricks and mortar workplace.

What will it look like? Will the desks be six feet apart? Will the reporters be wearing masks?

Today, the last day of my furlough, I’m thinking of what it will be like to return to a bricks and mortar workplace. What will it look like? Will the desks be six feet apart? Will the reporters be wearing masks? 

One thing is for sure: At least two more desks will be empty.

Another journalist, a sports reporter who wrote about basketball like it was the sport of the gods, has been laid off.

Last night, as the tributes to Kevin kept pouring in, I wondered about my own future at the paper.

The company has been laying off the old-timers.

I have been struggling with retirement ever since I turned 65.

Friends urged me to get a plan, find a hobby, maybe meet some nice guy to share the last couple of decades with.

Every time I tried, I couldn’t imagine life without journalism and the Journal.

I still get a thrill when a big story breaks. I’m competitive as hell, even on Twitter. I’ve known some of my sources for 10, 15 years.

Still, my closest friends have left the Journal. They have found fulfillment in retirement, at public radio and other newspapers.

I’m too old to start somewhere else.

My closest friends have left the Journal. They have found fulfillment in retirement, at public radio and other newspapers. I’m too old to start somewhere else.

My best memories are at 75 Fountain Street.

The night cops reporter who could be found in one of four local bars if something big broke.

The reporter who once phoned in a house fire from his bed. He called the next-door neighbor, who gave him a blow-by-blow account.

The time Dave Crombie and I went to a lesbian biker bar to talk to the friends of two murder suspects, who had killed someone in a bar called Rawhides.

The time I invited two women to lunch to quiz them about a possible serial killer. They shot up heroin first.

The New Bedford highway murders. The Father Porter church scandal. The Station nightclub fire.

The day we won a Pulitzer. The day we lost a Pulitzer.

The tough part is I can’t talk to anyone at the paper because I’m furloughed.

Are they scared, too? Are they reminiscing about the good, old days when one of our house ads described us as “the 900-pound gorilla”?

The furlough has been a blessing because it hinted that there is life beyond the Journal.

But it also reminded me how much I still love the place.

On Monday, Borg returns to remote work for the Providence Journal. You can read her previous entries here, here, here, and here.

For additional first-person reflections from current and former education journalists like Lauren Camera, Dorie Turner Nolt, Amber C. Walker, Ann Doss Helms, Rachel Cohen, and Amy Silverman, click here.