Vacation all I ever wanted.

One of the first things I celebrated in January was one year on the job which meant getting 10 glorious days of vacation - which meant I was using them as best I could. This week, I finally got a chance to start enjoying my earned time - and Lord knows I needed it.

Indian Shores

I've spent the past 3 days between Indian Shores and Clearwater - all of 20 to 30 minutes apart - with my grandparents. I haven't seen them in 13 months and this has to be one of the most relaxing times I've had as of late, watching the sunset from the condo, finishing 2 books, eating yummy food and seeing the Phillies...lose, ahh well, you can't win 'em all.

That said, being with my grandparents has been one of the biggest pleasures I've experienced in a long time. No one has the ability to make me laugh like they do and to hear them talk about the past just blows me away.

This trip carried conversations that breached all sorts of topics, but lingered on talks pertaining to love and my career - both topics I'm incredibly passionate about. While the love talk was more in jest, the career one took a turn for the more serious as we discussed what I want for my life.

My grandfather worked in the journalism industry 39 years for money and many more just for the privilege of it. Before I got in the industry, I talked to him about it, the challenges of the world and how to best put it and this weekend he explained it in a different way.

One of the most frustrating things about working in news is the limiting nature of it all. I was looking at the skeleton of a 30 minute show and realized that when you take into account the 4 minutes of sports and various breaks for weather and obviously the commercials that pay the bills, the news is literally 8 minutes.

Eight minutes.

All of the news of the day boiled down to 8 measly minutes.

I began complaining to him about it, how things would be so much easier if there was just more time and he told me the same thing he always told his students, "if you can't explain your story in one sentence, you don't know your story." As our talk continued, we began to break down things about how things have changed in the media, how technology has moved things forward and my grandfather brought things to a different perspective.

In the beginning was the Word.

That was it, it was his way of explaining the importance of words. As we stayed on that topic we delved into how there would never quite be enough time and the importance of measuring our words and it got me thinking about, well, words...being concise, learning how to express myself fully - so I decided to use his words as a challenge. A challenge to make sure all of my words are what I meant through and through.

So I issue the same challenge to you!