The laser focus of Anger

I struggle with focus.

It’s gotten worse as I get older. I get so many Great Ideas for books, podcasts, you-name-it, but then I lose focus. I can’t remember what it was about the Great Idea that was so great. Often, I can’t even remember the idea itself.

Once, long ago, I was energized and focused all the way through to the finish line. And what a finish! It changed my life.

What kept me going was Anger

I was working for a big radio station in San Diego, as the ‘news sidekick’ on the FM side. I think of my role as sidekick instead of my actual title, News Director, because I wound up being the foil for a popular morning jock, who bantered with me before every newscast. Undignified maybe, but fun.

FM radio was just coming into its own at the time, after years as the poor, classical music cousin to Top 40 AM stations. Nobody thought it would explode the way it did in the 70s, as listeners discovered the superior sound quality, perfect for serious Classical and Rock lovers alike.

I shared the station’s AM newsroom, where everyone else was expected to write stories for the AM anchors. But because FM was hipper than AM, I had to rewrite all the stories in a more conversational way. It was called ‘demographic news’: very short stories chosen and written to interest my Rock-listening audience — three or four sentences, max.

Thanks to my own micro-attention span I got to be pretty good at it, but it took all of my off-air time. Even then, I had a serious problem with writer’s block. Since I did a newscast every thirty minutes, morning drive was hurried and stressful. My stomach was in knots as I tried to think of different, hipper ways to tell the same news stories others were just—telling.

My counterpart, the morning anchor on the AM side, was a balding Midwesterner in his early thirties who reminded me of everything I had left Minnesota to get away from. Mike was precise and boring with a thin, high-pitched voice. I couldn’t stand him.

Meanwhile, at home, my mother was dying of cancer

I had brought her to live with me with the help of county services, which provided us with a hospital bed, a part-time housekeeper who vacuumed and washed dishes every morning while I was on the air, and a visiting nurse. My then-fourteen-year-old son, Chris, brought Mom breakfast and ate with her before going to school. San Diego Hospice sent a volunteer who kept Mom company in the afternoons. They were all amazing and wonderful.

And I was unbearably sad.

The only way I could maintain a cheerful front, on the air and to my family, was to stop on the way home from work at Baskin-Robbins for a double-dip mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. Soon, it became a triple-dip cone.

Then I discovered that if I drove a different route, I could stop at a second Baskin-Robbins for another triple dip.

After that, I bought a bottle of Amaretto and hid it in the bathroom for emergencies, like the time I broke down sobbing at a stoplight. It was too much to bear, the though of my beloved mother losing every shred of dignity, unable even to hold her head up.

Cancer was so unfair

I had to get myself together before I could face Mom, so I pulled up in front of our place, ran into the bathroom, gulped down some liqueur, and washed my face.

The volunteer, an angelic, white-haired woman who had joined the hospice staff after her daughter died of cancer, wasn’t fooled. I could see by her kind expression that she recognized the red-rimmed eyes, the blotchy cheeks. She had been there before.

On Mother’s Day that awful year, I said good-bye to my mother with a small pot of violets and a card that awkwardly thanked her for sticking around long enough for me to show her I wasn’t a complete failure.

I had never finished anything before, never gone to college, never hung onto a job more than a year, until with her help I had managed to finish radio school and find my niche. Radio just worked for me. I fit in for the first time in my life.

I will be forever grateful for her faith in me.

Sometime that night, after we hugged our last hug, my mother slipped into a coma. She died a few days later.

I cried at first but after that, I was inexplicably joyful. Mom was free and so was I.

More than that, I had for once done the Right Thing, in spite of my previously sniveling character. For years, I had been terrified of facing anything difficult, especially her illness and death. Now, I could face myself. I had proved that I was a decent human being after all.

So I didn’t need to mourn, not yet; I needed to work

I needed to kid around with my morning drive partner and dive back into life. I went back on the air three days after Mom died.

I felt a new confidence and freedom to say what I thought. Watching my mother leave her body after so much suffering, I had come to the realization that none of this career stuff was important. Career was demoted to child’s play, like toddlers building castles in a sandbox.

What really mattered were love and family.

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“You never write news for me,” Mike complained loudly in the newsroom one morning.

I was floored. Was I supposed to write very targeted stories for my audience and then rewrite them in his style too? I didn’t have time for that. I only had 25 minutes between newscasts, and it was all I could do to cover my own ass. I ignored him, but his jibe rankled and festered.

Then I discovered, quite by accident, that Mike was making $150 a week more than I was, due to outdated union rules about pay for AM anchors (who were almost always male) and FM anchors (who were almost always female). Sexism!

I was furious. But instead of demanding a raise, I decided to look for a better job in the second-biggest radio market in the country: Los Angeles.

I would show him a thing or two

That weekend, I drove up to L.A. to research all the stations in the area at UCLA’s library. I got their addresses and phone numbers, and called each one to find out the names of their program directors. Addressing them by name would be important.

And what the hell, I grabbed the addresses of the radio networks in New York too. I knew I didn’t stand a chance but it would be interesting to get feedback from the top people in the business.

When I called ABC’s radio newsroom to get the name of the person there who received audition tapes, the young desk assistant who answered said, “You mean for the six new networks?”

I coughed. Apparently, ABC was hiring.

“Uh, yes,” I managed to squeak, trying to sound unsurprised.

I went back to work that Monday with renewed focus: to put out the best demo tape possible.

You’ve heard the term Flow. That’s when you are in the Zone, so focused on what you are doing that everything else seems to disappear. You can’t see or hear anything but what you are working on.

For two weeks, I was in Flow

I recorded all my newscasts and listened to each one later, picking out the best parts and splicing them together with bits of music and sound effects until I had two minutes of tape that vibrated with energy and wit.

Then I spiffed up my admittedly thin resumé as much as I could, wrote a cover letter for each station and network, and sent them off.

My friend, in whose apartment I had stayed that weekend in L.A., later told me she had worried about how I would take all the rejection she was sure would come my way. I laughed, because I knew I was ready. It was only a matter of time.

And I was right.

“Hi, LaVonne, this is Peter Flannery at ABC News.” The voice on the phone was warm and smooth like melting caramel. “We would like you to come to New York for an audition.”

Two months later, as I said goodbye to my coworkers in the San Diego newsroom, Mike came up to shake my hand without a hint of envy in his voice or eyes, and I felt a twinge of shame for hating him so much.

I should have thanked him, actually

Without my anger at Mike, I never would have sustained focus long enough to become an ABC Radio News Correspondent.

There are all kinds of motivation to sustain focus. Anger is a good one, though not exactly healthy over the long term. Now, I’m trying Joy—the joy of telling a good story. That feels a lot better.