﷯ As much as I'd like to claim it, I was not "born on the bayou." It's not that there aren't plenty of cypress trees and snapping turtles in my hometown. It's just that northwest Louisiana has more in common with east Texas than it does with New Orleans. I grew up just outside of Shreveport, La., recently of riverboat fame (or infamy, depending on which congregation you ask), where the trees were just as likely to be pine as cypress. Although I spent my fair share of days walking in the woods and trying to find Caddo Indian arrowheads, I don't think I ever really appreciated nature until I moved to Dallas. Sometimes, it feels like I have to drive 10 minutes to find what I would consider a real stand of trees. As it is, I can spend a full day on my kayak, listening to nature and trying to ignore the drone of city sounds. But I've gotten off course. Sorry about that. I graduated from high school with honors, then attended LSU-Shreveport where I fell in love with journalism. I'd always enjoyed writing, but journalism seemed more public-minded than the short story and yearbook caption writing I'd done up until that point. Now I was able to take an idea, research it thoroughly, talk to the people with at least some of the answers and pass that knowledge along to others. It seemed like a win-win, since I was able to give people the information they needed or wanted and I was able to learn it first. Nothing compares to feeling like you have the inside scoop, even if it is just about a change in zoning ordinances or a school uniform policy. Sure, that change might be inconsequential to most people, but was part of the machinery that got that information to the people it mattered to most, sometimes before they even knew it mattered to them. ﷯ I spent about a decade as an "ink-stained wretch" in the Dallas area, with a couple of short interludes in Louisiana and Arkansas. Turns out Dallas has all of my friends in it, so that's where I have always ended up. I drove my journalism career around the Metroplex until the wheels began to fall off of the industry. It would be nice to say that I saw the inevitable coming and jumped free before the newspaper group I worked for crashed, but that would be no truer than claiming bayou bona fides. I stuck with Today Newspapers until they locked the door in July 2009. I spent a little while wandering dazedly after the crash. I could've used my connections to land another newspaper job, but after looking at the newspaper landscape for a while, I decided to strike off on a new path. Better to find a new way forward than to end up at another dead end with my fellow J-school grads. The road turned out to be a lot more winding than I first expected. It took me through retail sales and work in a high security bank vault, but I have found a use for my skills again in marketing. I have gotten back to sharing news and information with people who need it, even if they don't know it yet.

Copyright © Kirk Dickey 2014. All Rights Reserved.