Changes to this Blog
Long time readers of this blog will know that my life can sometimes get chaotic. Life situations for me also tend to change quickly, taking me in entirely new directions almost overnight. Both are something that has happened to me as of recent. I will do what I can to explain now and how this will impact this blog going forward.
A World Turned Upside Down
My start to 2023 wasn’t what I expected. To start off, my fiancé practically lost her main shifts, mainly due to her studies in nursing. A part of studying nursing in South Australia requires at least two placements in rural areas. Her placements meant she lost her normal shifts with one place she works at. As for the second, funding changes resulted in a cutback of all staff shifts. This, alongside starting a two-month placement starting in January meant more of the working income would come from me. At least I still had my job as a graphic designer, or so I thought.
The start of 2023 saw my workplace run out of funding, meaning all staff had to cut back their hours. As for me, this meant no more shifts, being a casual staff member. In one foul swoop, both of us lost all our main sources of income, leaving us with government support as our only source of income. To give context: my now former workplace is a start-up company. They are good people and believe in a great cause, but it is a start -up which is always filled with risk. Yet, risk brings out the best in us, which is one of many reasons why I tend to take risky positions.
These, as well as other significant changes in life, meant I needed to find new work fast. With my skills and experience, I knew I could get something else fast. What happens next is the biggest surprise of them all.
Scoring the Most Difficult Role of Them All
So, I can say this now: I am now officially a Cadet Journalist. Turns out somewhere in South Australia was looking for cadet journalists. I put my name in, never expecting to score such a coveted role. Yet, here I am, starting out in the world of professional journalism.
If you read the About Me section of this blog, you will notice I don’t have a degree in journalism. However, I have worked a fair amount in the area before scoring this role. First, it was writing for my student magazine at uni. This evolved into an editor role and connections I had led me to writing for an online arts magazine for a while. Here, I wrote features on the arts scene in Adelaide, as well as reviews for the 2019 and 2020 Adelaide Fringe. All these experiences built my skills and passion for journalism. I later scored a writing role on a local newspaper in 2021, mainly writing general news and sport. This same time was when I also made my debut in a national publication, which was published in early 2022. This is just a basic overview of the road I took to get that coveted cadet journalist role.
Now, you might be wondering what the catch is. Well, this is going to be mainly in rural and regional South Australia. I will at least be based soon in Murray Bridge, not that far from Adelaide. However, the first two weeks of my position have been in the small mid-north town of Balaklava. For those outside of South Australia, Balaklava is a small town of about 2,000 people north of Adelaide. And like a lot of small towns in South Australia, public transport is virtually non-existent. This has resulted in me driving there for the first two weeks; a massive change to my usual bus or train commute. Thankfully, this commute changed a couple of weeks ago to Victor Harbor, where another office of the company is based. And now with Murray Bridge starting shortly, these commutes will be less frequent and far shorter than the first two weeks. Although, saying that, the people at the Balaklava office are good people too, the distance is the only drawback.
What All This Will Mean For The Blog
Working fulltime as a journalist and the preciousness of downtime will have an impact on this blog. I will continue over time to write pieces about the books I read and give my thoughts on them. However, as from now, these would be sparser as I will be taking longer to read some books. I do have some back up content which will keep going for a little while longer.
At some point too, if my workplace requests it, I may have to suspend publishing material on here. However, this is an unlikely extreme as all the work done on here is unrelated to the work I will be covering. If this is the case, I will make a post about that, if it comes up. Until then, you will continue to get posts from me, no matter how sparse they might be.
P.s. I do have my thoughts on Adelaide Writers Week 2023. I will post them sometime soon.
Cameron Lowe 
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