2023: Ride my see-saw

My world is spinning around/Everything is lost that I found/People run, come ride with me/Let’s find another place that’s free.

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Emerging out of a Covid Christmas, it's been difficult to think about how I could sum up what 2023 was to me. For some reason, the Moody Blues classic above stands out.

Run, run like a fire/Don't you run in/In the lanes/Run for time.

But as I sit here in this office I've called a home for the last five-and-half years, this year, in its ways, was a see-saw. It was one of ups and downs. Hopes that turned into fears. Expectations expected and not met. Doing my job as a duty to this community.

At the beginning of 2023, I had an incontrovertible instinct that things would change from a 2022 of stagnation, a year during which I called my very essence as a person into question. From a fractured femur, I yearned, I would finally become a firefighter.

I was approached about becoming a non-interior firefighter, and I did it. Yet, I'm still Brand Selvia the news reporter who shows up. There is still another Brand apart from the other personas I have promoted out of that professional duty.

The turnout pants of a volunteer, without Firefighter 1 and 2. The cap I've worn as the reporter many seem to know. This embodies the three worlds of mine that I have wanted to keep their own people.

They have not been separate. That is behind the point I want to drive about the transformations I went through this year.

Indeed, it is necessary to take the job and the people seriously. The dividing line is where that attitude can become personal.

Going through my emergency response support (ERS) training earlier this year was a crucial intersection of what I've done as a reporter, and a passion I've grown into with covering the fire service in Putnam County. But it has become a complicated passion.

... Sweat so hard just to end my fears/Not to end my life a poor man/But by now, I know I should have run.

I've wanted to believe that a change should come.

I have no qualms saying this has meant leaving the Banner. Yet, every time I've tried to talk myself into it, I've remembered what I've given to this place. I remember what I've given to our firefighters, to our first responders on the whole, no matter what.

And then I recall, that I was taken in at Reelsville VFD to do ERS. Spina bifida and doubt aside, I was given an opportunity. For all that it's worth, that's all I'd ever want.

I've said it in terms of going out on "jobs," as much as covering my school boards and town councils, that the effort matters. Those three words as a phrase mean more to me now than they ever have. The same applies to me continuing as a volunteer firefighter.

There is, as a firefighter put it to me, an unchanneled enthusiasm for me to act upon.

Into next May, I'm looking to have my journalism master's complete. What that means for my tenure at the Banner remains to be seen, but it is not amenable to me, or to the company, to speculate here. I remain dedicated to the purpose of our local journalism.

As for the firefighting, I can't believe now, that it is a dream I didn't know I had. It is, though, a calling that is higher than myself as an individual. Many others have realized similar, and they have made it a passion, either as volunteers or as career firefighters.

Just know that I am still here as that Banner reporter. What I do is important work, with or without recognition or appreciation. That means doing the job - and it will be.