Throughout my tenure at the Los Angeles County Hall of Administration, I've often felt like an accidental tourist. After a decade as a broadcast and print journalist, I had never even intended to visit, professionally speaking. But in 1989, when my newspaper and my job came to a crashing end, I found myself invited up to the Hall for what I thought would be a relatively short stay until things turned around in the news business. Instead, I moved in, and working at the top echelons of the nation's largest local government turned into a challenging and rewarding career for the next 26 years.
Outside, the journalism world we once knew lay in ruins. Former colleagues thought me prescient for having escaped when I did; the truth, as I kept telling them, is that I just got lucky. Had it been my choice, I would probably be buried in the rubble with everyone else.
I've always had a strong interest in politics, but never - since a teenage fling with the McGovern campaign first broke my heart - as a professional aspiration. Don't get me wrong: I believe deeply in the political process, and the good things that sincere and well-motivated people across the political spectrum can accomplish within it; I've seen countless examples, and have even participated in my share.
But I believe even more strongly in the power and the responsibility of the Fourth Estate to keep the system in check and hold it accountable. Jefferson famously chose newspapers over government. I don't take it that far - certainly not these days - but I do take his point.
Whenever friends asked me if I ever missed journalism, my answer was always the same. I miss what it was, I would reply, not what it is. I missed writing, which had always been the most satisfying part of my work. And most of all, in between my "institutional" commentaries, I missed the opportunities I periodically had for speaking and writing in my own voice, not the voice of someone else - station management, a newspaper editorial board, an elected official, a level of government.
Editorial writing and political communications are fundamentally acts of ventriloquism. Either you throw your voice so it appears to come from somewhere else, or someone else is throwing their voice so that appears to come from you. Like an actor lost in a long-running role, after enough years of this kind of performance you begin to wonder if you've even got any voice or individual identity left at all.
So having just passed one of those milestone birthdays where we're expected to take stock, the time has come for me to make a change. Some of the most personally satisfying work I've done in recent years has, since 1999, involved teaching my writing for advocacy class at UCLA, guest-lecturing for other professors, and contributing occasional essays to LAO's Native Intelligence column. So I have decided to retire from the County to pursue my passion projects full time, which will involve more writing and teaching and different forms of engagement. Stay tuned.
In recent weeks, as it happens, I've met with several younger friends who came to me for advice about career frustrations and angst and uncertainty about where they should go and what they should do.
I counseled them as I would be counseled by others: to thine own self be true. Follow your heart, trust your instincts, and when all else fails, do the right thing. It's not necessarily what they teach you in business school, and it's not the easiest professional route, but I have never taken the path of least resistance. It's not in my journalistic DNA.
It's been a lucky run for 35 years. I have almost literally fallen from one job into another with hardly a break. I'm not the longest serving person on the Hall of Administration's Eighth Floor - I think at least one colleague has me beat by a few months - but I may be the longest continually serving political communications professional in town. I've worked sequentially at the highest level for three of the most powerful local elected officials in the country. From Ed Edelman, who recruited me, to Zev Yaroslavsky and Sheila Kuehl who retained me, it's been a privilege and an honor to serve three thoughtful, idealistic, committed, and dedicated progressive officeholders.
I still believe deeply in the County's mission as "provider of last resort." Whether it's troubled kids at risk of abuse, neglect or exploitation, probation youth, homeless individuals, the mentally ill, the substance addicted, the medically indigent, people living with HIV/AIDS, those in need of all manner of public assistance - it's the County that typically runs the programs and delivers the services. Thousands of lives hang in the balance every day.
Nor is that all the County does, of course. Law enforcement, firefighting, emergency management, unincorporated area planning and zoning, infrastructure and utilities, Countywide flood control protection, regional libraries, arts grants, cultural institutions like LACMA, performance venues like the Hollywood Bowl and the Ford Amphitheatre, parks and recreational facilities like El Cariso Park, tiny airfields like Pacoima's Whiteman Airport.
It's been an incredible experience to be part of. But now it's time to say goodbye to all that.
"Leap, and the net will appear," the 19th-century American naturalist and essayist John Burroughs wrote. Don't we all desperately want to believe that's true? At the end of this month, I'll test-fly that proposition myself.
Wish me luck.