You are happily doing some work for an online news organization — a really good one. You like it very much, you like the philosophy, and you like the people. You think it’s really taking off, too, and there’s an exciting energy about being part of something so important and cool. You realize, though, that it’s a challenge to use the third person exclusively, and usually, passive voice annoys you (yeah, you do, don’tcha?), but hey, sometimes it’s necessary, or it’s all you can do with the text and still have it make sense. It’s also like riding a bike: you can get back into it when you’ve worked in journalism enough, except anywhere with your laptop is quieter than the newsroom where you learned to write on deadline and copy edit.

You get those events listings that say, “we” all the time in the original listing, and, recognizing that that will not stand, you must then ask yourself, “Well, who the hell is this ‘we’? Is it the ‘they’ you are always hearing about, except this month, they’re having an event where they weed local parks instead of trying to wreck your life specifically?” and then you figure out who “we” is, and edit accordingly. Or sometimes you get postings that don’t have anywhere near enough information to be remotely useful to anyone, and then you do some research, scrape together enough that people will know whom to contact and where and when to show up, and what-all is going on (you leave the “why” — and usually the “how” — to them).

Either way, you polish it up and post that badboy. This, of course, makes you feel clever and pleased with yourself. You solved something. You made a little journalistic marble out of a scratched and dented ball-bearing pile of words. Now you can go on beautifying electronic copy, with a smile on your face.

Thanks, I feel better now. I just had to get that out of my system. Or, you know, you did.