Jake’s Take: A Man With No Opinion Coming to the painful realization that I’m boring

JACOB POLITTE MANAGING EDITOR

Usually, I’ve found the opinion pieces I write to be among the least challenging; this is a mantra I’ve passed on to my staff writers interested in writing one.

“Truly, anything goes here. The gloves can come off, and you can write about almost anything you want.”

And yet, for the February issue of The Montage, I struggled. The Opinions piece was actually the last thing I managed to put together for the issue (which turned out to be a great issue and actually got enthusiastic responses from author Andrew Rice and the filmmakers of “A New Home”, and talking about “A New Home” seemed to be an interesting piece since I felt so tied to the source material.

Even now, I find this column to be the last thing I’m working on. And I don’t know why. It shouldn’t be this hard.

Responsible, credible news writing can be hard, even if we get it done every time.

And a good Art & Life piece isn’t that easy, either.

Don’t even get me started on Sports, which admittedly hasn’t been a strong section of this paper over the last few years.

Opinions should have been a cake walk for me.

So why isn’t it anymore?

I think, honestly, I may have run out of opinions.

That sounds crazy, but I’ve always tried to stay away from being too repetitive. These days, I’m feeling very repetitive. There have been a number of “Jake’s Take” installments, and some of them have featured recurring takes.

Politics are always an easy thing to discuss, but these days, it’s exhausting to talk about (although, I would like to state again, for the record, that I think Mike Pence’s book is hot garbage). And I can only articulate how much I think that Majorie Taylor Greene is a live-action Scooby Doo villain so many times. I could go back to that well again, and I probably will in the future, but this isn’t exclusively a political paper.

I could talk again about my stepfather, but dwelling on what happened to him constantly just isn’t healthy.

There are a number of things regarding education to talk about as I have in the past, and there are many STLCC topics that I can discuss, too. But I’ve found that especially since I took the reigns at Editor that navigating the truth from the fiction regarding college news can be like navigating a minefield.

And this paper can be very review heavy, too. That’s become my wheelhouse, but it also can be a determinant, too.

I’ll likely return to writing about these topics in the future, but writing about them now feels so forced. It feels like a job, and it is a job, but when it begins to feel like a job, it’s no longer rewarding.

I’ve taken on so many responsibilities in the last few years, and perhaps that’s caught up with me.

So I think, as of right now, I truly may have run out of opinions. I am busy, and I can be opinionated but I am boring. I am predictable. I am what I said to myself once that I never would be.

I recently read an edition of TIME Magazine (not a normal practice of mine these days, but I was in a Barnes and Noble and I had a few extra dollars to waste) from a few weeks ago with a cover featuring the headline “ZIP IT: The Power Of Saying Less.”

I began to wonder if it was time for me to perhaps practice that headline a little more. Is it time that I just sit back and observe before saying anything for a while?Perhaps. But I have a job to do. No matter how challenging it may be to be innovative.

But, uh, Fawwaz?

If you could write another Tech Talk or something so I can take a month off from this section and give our readers a break from self-indulgent columns like this one? That’d be great.

Because I think I want to keep the gloves on for an issue or two.