On the Value of Family
Volume I, Number 4
As I begin writing this, I am sitting on the balcony of our sixth-floor suite at the West Baden Springs Hotel in southern Indiana. My wife, Linda, and I are here with my work family on a “business retreat.” (That’s what we’re calling it, at least.) Our magazine traded a one-night stay for eight people, along with three nice meals each, for an equal value in advertising space. We jumped on the chance to bond as a team and break away from day-to-day stresses of the deadline-driven magazine cycle.
My work family.
We’re a small group, the four of us, but we are family. That’s special, and it’s something that I have always valued in a work environment. In the best places I’ve worked, I was part of a small team of people who cared for one another, not just as co-workers, but also as friends.
When I worked in EMS for a small ambulance company in Madison, Indiana, years ago, you either got along with the people you worked with or you risked doing something critically wrong when lives were at stake. We stuck together like family then, and though we—and many of the friends we made along the way—have drifted apart, we continue to stay in touch.
Then, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the newsroom team at The Times-Tribune in Corbin, Kentucky, not only became my family, but also my closest lifelong friends. Though we didn’t all work together at the same time, there is no replacing the friendships we developed. To this day, we’re still family—Mark, Mary, Deb, Cheryl, Mike, Mitch, Susan, Missy, Piper. We laugh together, we cry together, we’re there for marriages and births and birthdays and funerals. Whenever we can get together—any combination of us—we do; unfortunately, that isn’t nearly as often as we would like.
Family is important, whether it’s a birth family, an adopted family, the family you marry into, or your work family. I need that core group of people with shared interests, not just for the 40-ish hours a week when we have to be together, but even occasionally in our off hours—those friends who would fight for you and for whom you would do the same. I value my friendships like I value doing work that I love. It’s a bonus when they converge.
And I do love my “day job” as managing editor of Bloom Magazine. It satisfies my left-brain need to organize and solve problems, while also giving my right brain enough creative responsibility to make the work enjoyable without stripping away my creative freedom. At the end of the workday, I don’t feel that my creative spirit has been drained, or that I don’t have the time, opportunity, or energy to give to my photography.
But most importantly, I love the people I work with—Malcolm, Cassaundra, Kat, and Stephanie. We are family. I wouldn’t trade any one of them—or anyone in any of my “family” relationships—for anything. They are as important to me as my birth family and the family I married into.
And for all my families, I am grateful.
What about you—do you have a work family that you enjoy being with? Or have you in the past? What are some of your favorite experiences with them? Share your answers in the comments.
More photos from our trip to West Baden Springs Hotel, part of the French Lick Resort in southern Indiana …
Likewise, I was blessed to be part of the EMS Madison Ambulance family. I was the Pup of that era, Rodney was my brother......and I miss that family dearly. As for French Lick....it's our home away from home....the place never ceases to amaze me.
I'm proud and lucky to be part of the TT work family. (As well as the Higgins Street Posse subset thereof.) That you and Linda adopted me - and offered a taste of Midwestern familiarity in the foreign south - legitimately changed the trajectory of my life.
I've had a few other work crews that have become family - thank goodness - but it's a rare and lovely thing in today's professional setting. So glad you have one at Bloom. ❤️