In the world of work, always have a goal and never stop chasing it.

That’s the essential advice from every job counselor I’ve ever known. Do what you love, and you’ll never have to dread getting up and heading to your job.

From grade school on, I always wanted to be a journalist. By way of applying for a high school weekly column, I was fortunate enough to be able to work my way into the newsroom of the local daily newspaper in the South Jersey town where I grew up.

When I’d show up to drop off my column, I was looked upon as “the kid” among the elite of the day’s working press, who never let me forget they earned a living with their words. I was just a hanger-on who made some pocket change with the student news I was able to scrape together in the halls of the high school.

But, I wanted more.

In the fall of 1959, I remember begging for assignments, until the editor was looking for someone to do a puff piece on old widow Chambers, who was coming up on her 100th birthday. So, “the kid” got the assignment.

Kindly Mrs. Chambers agreed to sit for an interview, but insisted she had never done much of anything except live 100 years. I had visions of my glorious story struggling to make one of the back pages. What a journalist I’d turn out to be – a writer with nothing to say.

I kept probing, she kept insisting on obscurity.

Until .... she finally said, “Well I do remember being boosted up on my daddy’s shoulders at a parade, and waving to Abraham Lincoln going by in a carriage.”

Bingo. Front page. A career is born.

As Feb. 12, the birth date of Abraham Lincoln, approaches each year, I think back to the lesson that encounter provided. I think of the famous speech given by Winston Churchill during the darkest days of the battle of Britain. “Never give in ...” he said. “Never, never, never, never give in.”

Without the goal of proving I had what it takes to be a writer, I could have given up on old widow Chambers and handed in a piece of puff with no substance.

Whether you’re a teenager in a first job working in a fast-food restaurant, a sorter in a fulfillment warehouse, a laborer or a professional, the advice is the same. Always keep in mind what your next step will be, and never give in until you get there.

Jim Marsh

correspondent

East Penn Press

Salisbury Press