Some news from the Daily Camera.

Sports editor Gary Baines decided to step down from his post as the Camera's sports editor after 25 years.

Gary gave me an opportunity to try my hand at real-life journalism (whatever that really means). I remember the first call that CU beat writer Kyle Ringo made to Gary to ask if I could write an article on CU football after a loss to Baylor in Oct. of 2006. I was thinking to myself "this guy is really going to let me write an article on CU football of all things. Before I have even auditioned in some other forum?" He didn't have to take a chance on me, he didn't have to trust me, but I am forever thankful that he did.

Gary was a wonderful person to work for. He was a great teacher, but in different ways than I've ever experienced. He was understanding, but had a quiet confidence about him that made you fearful of screwing up in any way. He was so calm and focused on deadline that it was almost impossible for me and everyone else in the room to feel the same way.

In my eyes he was underappreciated, as all employees at the Camera are, but Gary embodied a tireless jounalist. He was in the office before anybody else in the department, out long after everyone was gone for the night. Like it said in the article, he was concerned about the reader first. He made sure you as a reporter knew that, and what that meant to the particular story you were writing. He didn't give many guidelines about anything, but rather left it to you to figure things out on your own. A trait that forced me to learn more than I will ever know during my time there.

Great feature in the December issue of Esquire on a guy who decided to build his own boat by hand for less than 30K and sail around the world by himself. A really unfathomable undertaking the more you actually read about his story. He is keeping a blog of his journey.

The author and his colleague's thoughts on "just existing" versus "living your life" and experiencing things other people haven't are really well said.

He talks about the experience being "fundamentally new" and thus being impossible for anything he's done previously in his life to prepare him for his trip. I can relate to and think about this concept fairly often at this stage of my life.

In the end paragraph he speaks about the idea of not going on the voyage being "impossible to consider". This leads to him stating that he isn't doing the trip for fun, but "it does feel like who I am and what I'm doing. I feel fully engaged, which is the best part about living." Well said. I feel like being "fully engaged" is a pretty rare thing for most people. If you are not fully engaged in life there can't be much passion or care behind what you are doing. You are just floating through life.