Regular readers have probably noticed that I never talk much about my day job as editor of our little weekly newspaper. But I do get asked about it from time to time, and since the gig is often responsible for my absences here, I probably owe at least a little explanation of just what it is I’m doing when I disappear.

For starters, as anyone who has ever worked in small-town journalism will tell you, the title “editor” is somethat misleading. Scratch that. Very misleading. The editor of a weekly like ours doesn’t sit behind a desk and dish out assignments to a staff of reporters, send photographers out to get the important shots, and buff up rough copy until it turns into glittering journalistic gems. Sometimes a weekly will have several reporters on staff, but just as often the editor is it. That’s certainly the case where I work, where I am the entire news staff. I report and write the stories. I shoot the pictures. I type, proofread, copyedit and rewrite all the press releases, letters, announcements and so forth that pour into the office. I also lay out the paper (which, believe it or not, we still do by cut-and-paste), and do a few other things to boot. Except for the ads, which I’m not involved with, about ninety to ninety-five percent of everything in the paper each week originates with me, is typed by me, edited or rewritten by me, or had some other type of direct involvement from me.

As you can probably guess, all of that usually takes a fair amount of time. There are many long days, many nights spent covering local government meetings, many weekends, many holidays, and always, always, always the deadline. It’s not your usual creative writer’s kind of deadline, either — you know, where you’re late with the book and call your editor to beg for an extra two weeks, or running behind on the story so it gets bumped back to the next issue of the magazine. This is a deadline that is unmoving, unchanging and absolutely unforgiving. You get the paper out every Wednesday no matter what else is going on in town, in the world, or in your own life. I’ve gone without sleep for two days to get out the paper. I’ve skipped trips to get out the paper. I’ve turned down enticing invitations to get out the paper. I’ve missed family activities and milestones to get out the paper. I’ve written when there were no words left to get out the paper. Once, many years ago now, I even showed up on Wednesday with pneumonia and a fever of 104 to get out the paper.

And here may be the real reason I haven’t written much about my day job, because just talking about it can sound an awful lot like whining. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not opposed to whining about my work — I’ve been known to whine about it quite a bit, as a matter of fact — but I usually try not to do it in public.

So, no, I’m not whining. Really. I’m just kind of laying it out, warts and all, for those who are curious.

I don’t always like my day job. Sometimes, truth be told, I really sort of hate it. There are days (or weeks, or months) that I feel myself teetering along a fraying tightrope stretched above a yawning canyon of total burnout. But there are times I actually do kind of like it. It’s never boring, and that’s a big plus. No matter how much of it is exactly the same week after week, there is always plenty that’s new and interesting, too. I’m proud to be part of an important industry and represent a noble species like the weekly small-town newspaper. I’m proud that our particular paper has been publishing for over 130 years; its pretty humbling to be part of a long, unbroken tradition like that. I’m delighted that we’re still independently owned and that we continue to fight the good fight against all the odds: a readership that is quickly aging and vanishing away, an alarmingly dwindling advertising base, an onslaught of competition from dozens of other sources, an onslaught so intense and unrelenting that even the biggest of the big city dailies are at serious risk, to say nothing of the little hole-in-the-wall rags like ours. Whenever I need a little inspiration to finish an impossible article, a little strength to keep typing, a little extra motivation to get out of bed at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday or pull myself together on Monday and start the whole weekly marathon over again … well, then, those things are usually enough to do it.

And that’s the long and short of it. Mostly long, I guess, longer than I thought it would be. But now you know. And you know that the next time I vanish from here for a few weeks at a time, I haven’t gone away for good. I’ll be back just as soon as the news allows.