Publisher column: It's all about perspective

Without getting too deep in the weeds of the magazine business, I can tell you that it’s a multi-step process. In the last few weeks, every step of that process outside of this office has either gotten more expensive or has had a change in schedule that wasn’t in our favor. Now that I think about it, maybe it’s both on all counts.

It got so bad that one afternoon we convened an afternoon executive committee meeting at Buffalo Wild Wings to consume an adult beverage or two and discuss ways to untangle ourselves from the tree of woe.

I’ve got to admit, I was feeling pretty down on the whole JNOW magazine experience. Then, I got a jolt of perspective.

Shanna and I had to visit Fayetteville recently, and on the drive down I-95, I thought back to the one-hour commute from Four Oaks that used to take me to the Fayetteville Observer every day. When we got to town, we drove past Whitfield Street, where the paper is (for now, anyway).

I thought about the day I left there, with a cardboard box of my stuff, in March 2015. We were planning the first edition of the Four Oaks Journal, which would come out in May, but we were hoping to have my salary while we got our little project off the ground. Life had other plans for us. Shanna went back to work there for a while, and I started fulltime on our family business.

It’s been a whirlwind journey, but along the way we developed a mantra. “The worst day at JNOW is better than the best day at the Observer.”

The way things have been going lately, I had lost sight of that a little. But I remember it now.

Every day I get to do this is a gift, and it’s a far better professional life than the one I left behind.