Not a regular day

My job is not dangerous. And in my humble opinion, my job is not terribly important. Most of my job consists of me watching high school kids play sports and writing about those sports. Sometimes I cover younger kids. And sometimes I cover adults.
But what I do is not terribly exciting (Olympics aside) and doesn't provide much drama.
However, there are days when you think about what you do in a different light and certainly yesterday was one of those days. You see a shooting at a community newspaper in Maryland and you wonder if it might happen where you are. It forces you to think.
When our offices were in Wolfeboro, our office manager, Vicky, and I would have discussions after a shooting somewhere in the world, talking about the possibilities of it happening in our office. It wasn't something we expected would happen, but it was obvious that Vicky, who had much more experience in bigger newspapers than I did, had given it some thought and knew what her plan was if such a situation arose.
Truth be told, I could walk out of the office tomorrow and get run over by a speeding car. I could be driving to a game and get in an accident. There are ways that I could die on the job, but I think that's the same for just about anybody. But there are few people (military members and police officers aside), who expect that they could get shot when they go to work.
However, it seems that there is no safe place in the world these days. Elementary schools. Malls. Churches. Newspaper offices.
There are people who are going to blame one political party over another and I am not one of those people. The culture of mass shootings has existed in this country for many years, long before the current administration and the previous administration.
The country is at a point where many people on both sides of the aisle can't have respectful conversations with people on the other side. It's insane and it's causing a divide that will be tough to close, meaning even more and more divisiveness as we move forward. There are many people that I am friends with who have different political opinions than I do. And you know what, that's their right. They are allowed to have their opinions just as I am allowed to have mine. I don't insult their opinions and to the best of my knowledge, they don't insult mine. I respect the fact that they are passionate about their opinions, even if they are different opinions that what I tend to hold. You know why? Because we're adults. And adults should be intelligent enough to recognize that not everyone is going to agree with their opinion. Of course, not all adults are intelligent enough.
I do this job because I enjoy sports and I enjoy writing. I've thought about the possibility of moving on from this job for a variety of reasons over the years, but to this date, I'm still here. And if everything goes as planned, I'll probably be here tomorrow too.
Sadly, today, that can't be said for everyone who does my job.