Joshua Thomas - C-S-E Editor

I find writing an editorial to be the most challenging part of my job each week. People often find this surprising, thinking that it would be a cinch to write from the heart, or to write about your own experience, untethered by the requirements of an actual article, but, it's the opposite for me.

I find that trying to adequately put my thoughts into eloquent words, accurately depicting a viewpoint, or several in some cases, quite stressful.  

Each week I look for the perfect topic. It has to be something I care about enough to expound upon. It has to be something I'm passionate enough about that it comes across in the writing. I have to view subjects from each perspective in order to write about them in a way that catches each member of the audience, but I don't want to condescend to people like I'm revealing some long hidden truth they hadn't already realized. My realizations are universal, but I must make them unique and entertaining.

It has to be personal…but not too personal.

Therein lies the biggest challenge for me, because there's a line I fear crossing. Letting a mass audience into your head can have a bizarre effect, and there are certain pieces, for the sanity of the writer, that should remain guarded. There's pieces that are solely mine, and I don't want them to belong to anybody else. There are parts that are not for others to pick apart, sympathize with or judge. It's the same in life.

But, I'm wondering now, how is that even possible in a week when something so impactful happens that everything you choose to write about — except that topic — feels wrong, or rings false? Usually, I'd just plug on and write and re-write until it worked, but this week, I'm finding it hard to do that. I sat looking at global and local topics for a while, trying to come up with an angle, and my mind kept wandering back to life.

This past weekend, my beloved grandmother, Olivia Davi, passed away, and it's been terribly hard on my family. Work has been a reprieve from grief, because covering an event and writing about it forces me to go into work mode — ask the right questions, take the right photos, make sure I have all the information I need, impart that information — but as soon as those stories, the pieces with basic templates — were finished, my mind went right back to life, and my grandmother is what's on my mind.

I know my grandma loved my editorials, as she told me this often. In fact, it was one of the last things we discussed. I'm having memories flood through my mind at a furious pace, and those are the pieces I will keep for myself, but to not acknowledge her in this piece — even if only to mention that I was proud of her, and it warms me to know she felt the same of me — would've seemed inappropriate. I wish she was here to read this — just to have her know that she was such a huge part of me "keeping up the good work."