I’m swallowing a lot of pride to write this blog. I would much rather forget about most of today, but it just doesn’t seem right to only talk about the good moments of the trip. Besides, in the end, I did finally get  a byline. It’s been exactly a year today since I wrote a news story. (I did write a few PR stories late last year.)

So I covered a Congressional hearing this morning about the Universal Service Reform Act, which was written to bring broadband service to rural areas, among other things.

My first draft of the story was awful. And I knew it. I couldn’t even tell you what I was thinking when I turned it in, but I did. And Jody, my editor, kicked it back out to me. Shame and embarrassment just about cover how I felt at her desk. I knew I could do a lot better than that first draft.

So I rewrote the story. The second time around it took some minor edits and we reworked my lede so the beginning of the story was interesting. And you can view the final product here. (Free registration required.)

Oh but my day didn’t end there. I left the office around 7 p.m. I got home around 8:30. It normally takes about 30 minutes to get home. There was an issue with smoke on the Red Line, so some trains were sharing tracks and causing everything to get backed up. Except all I knew when I waited for 15 minutes for the train to take off was that there was smoke somewhere and the train wasn’t going anywhere. So I got off and decided to try to take the bus.

I spent another half hour trying to find the right bus before finally giving up and getting back on the train. I made it back to the Red line and ran into the same issue. The train stood for at least 10 minutes with more and more people piling in until you literally could not squeeze one more person on the train before it finally took off. Then we got to the next stop and somehow more people managed to squeeze in.

And then we finally made it to my stop and sat next to the platform for 10 minutes before the doors finally opened and everyone started flooding the platform. Spending 30 minutes sandwiched between a wall and a bald guy is not how I want to spend my evening.