This weekend, I received a notice from my editor at Valley Magazine that the publication will be shutting down after its next edition. While not entirely unexpected, this is a sad day for me as a professional writer.

Valley Magazine is a glossy print magazine, covering general lifestyle topics from travel to home improvement, and it was never a hard-hitting publication. You would be pressed to find a single critical word written about anything at all in its pages. But the magazine did give me a few opportunities over the years to write articles that really fascinated and involved me. I wrote about the new Gang Czar, appointed by LA Mayor Villaraigossa; about kids having their first experiences as professional musicians; and in the final edition, about drug addiction and treatment for rich kids. (A few more here.)

All of these pieces were long, involving, and wreaked my personal life for a few weeks as I tried to learn how to be a journalist and a magazine writer. I never had any training, of course; I learned everything I know now on the job. And for all that, I will thank my editor Bonnie Steele, who barely ever changed a word in my articles, even when I turned in 2000+ word monstrosities. She was kind in-person and over the phone, and even though I never got to know her well, I wish her all the best. She did give me my first chance, after all.

That’s the other thing about Valley Magazine. Although I never made much money, it was the first publication to ever pay me to write, and to photograph. That’s big. I have a copy of my first writer paycheck somewhere, and I mean to frame it and put it up on the wall at some point. I should’ve done that long ago, but I didn’t and I regret not doing so, just as I regret not knowing my editor better and keeping in better touch with the people who originally introduced me to Valley – Susan Hartzler and Rubin Carson. Both of them were integral in me becoming the writer I am today, and yet I don’t speak with them, at least not often as I should.

What happens when the recession wakes you up to all the people left on the road? Oh well. There’s no sense lamenting lost ones and lost things.