CARLTON FLETCHER: We all can be masters of our universes

— Pink Floyd

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. — I sat on this same patio about eight months ago, snatching a few hours of R&R time away from the office and — more frequently — home office that have imprisoned me (by choice, but still …) especially these last several years.

No one plans their life around a job — a profession, an occupation, a passion, but a job still — but sometimes that’s just the way life works out. And as the use-by date on that job slips slowly but inexorably away, it’s impossible not to look back and think of opportunities like these missed. That’s when you start to feel underappreciated, taken for granted, nothing but another cog in a machine that, though, much less significant than you’d like to believe, still enthralls you, still challenges you, each and every day.

When I got into this business, things were a lot different. I bought into — hook, line and sinker — that old newspaper mantra “Get it first and get it right.” And when I managed over the years to do just that, I felt a pride that’s rare in an individual’s life. It doesn’t matter what you’ve chosen as a profession, performing your assigned tasks at a level above and beyond the expected norm is a feeling to which few other accomplishments can compare.

Now, there are those who tell me my profession — and thus my usefulness — is no longer relevant. That they can get “all the news I want” off the internet and not pay a penny for it.

A few things about that: One, if you think you’re “not paying” for the internet or any of those social media sites to which you are bound and around which your life revolves, you’re fooling yourself. And that cost is measured in more than dollars and cents. Two: Yes, you can get “instant news” off the internet, but there is absolutely no certainty that the news you’re getting is accurate or even news at all. Our former president liked to use the term “fake news,” and that’s basically what you get on the internet. Even the “legitimate” sites that are the dominion of typically dependable sources of information are bound by an edict to “get it first, we’ll make corrections is necessary, and by the time people discover the ‘news’ is not real, they will have moved on to something else already anyway,” there being no shortage of continuous gossip-mixed-with-actual-news to feed the general public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for juicy tidbits. Fact-checkers? Are you kidding me?

Third, and perhaps from my perspective most importantly, while there is indeed a great deal of “legitimate news” on various websites, much of it is put there — and copied, over and over and over — by people who actually still make a concerted effort to get the news right, even if they do post it a few milliseconds behind some site that has no interest in accuracy.

I may be very analog, but I have no issue with living in this digital world — other than, I should note, the fact that the technology intimidates and confounds me around every turn. Maybe I’m, as Styx sang, “foolin’ myself and I don’t believe it,” but I honestly feel that the work I continue to do matters. I feel an obligation to do as much as I can — in an obviously diminished capacity, staffing being what it is — and to continue to try and get it right.

And while I feel inadequate when I fail — frequently — when the stars align and I do succeed in my job and have an impact that I believe makes our community better, I realize all over again why I do this. And while monetary rewards and acclaim, those twin goals that drive most Americans, continue to elude me, the satisfaction that this job brings allows me to sit on this balcony whenever feasible (and affordable) and reflect on the wonders that just living a life brings. And I am revived, again driven, ready to reclaim my small spot in the circle of this community’s life that supplies enough joy and majesty to make even the smallest among us masters of our individual universes.