You gotta grow up sometime.
After better than six and a half years covering sports for The Minot Daily News, I am moving on to what I hope is a better career opportunity.
They call the sports department the toy department.
That's because for the most part, it's fun and games.
And while it is a lot of fun covering the sports and games, our job at the Minot Daily News doesn't really kick into full gear until most of those games are done. That can make for some long nights that inevitably end in tight deadlines.
Those deadline pressures have caused some furrowed brows and gray hairs, but for the most part, the positives have outweighed the negatives.
Sports media is an industry fueled by passion. That is good and bad for a sports wrtiter or editor.
It means there is a large portion of the readership that is excited about your product. It also means that it is tough to satisfy the passions of every reader and subscriber.
I've tried to do the best I can to be true to the story and do what I thought was in the best interest of the readers, though there will always be people that disagree with the decisions a sports editor makes.
The newspaper industry has changed a lot in my time at the Minot Daily News. That has been a mixed bag. In many ways, it's made the job a lot tougher and stretched our staff thin.
But we've also tried to use some of the changes to our advantage and it's made us work in a more streamlined fashion and made the staff more productive.
The Minot Daily News has afforded me dozens of interesting journalistic opportunities.
I've interviewed sports dignitaries like John Wooden, pop stars like Taylor Swift and home-town-boy-done-good Josh Duhamel.
I've done stories about floods, fairs and even fashion.
I've covered the Masters twice and a number of other big professional and college sporting events.
I've written about the best athletes and most important sporting events in the state in the past six years and change.
But one interview has stuck in my mind.
When former Minot High School girls basketball coach Bruce Anderson resigned after decades of coaching, I asked him to pick out a few games that stuck out in his head as being the most memorable.
He was hard-pressed to come up with one, but said his memories of coaching revolved around people.
The players he coached, their parents, his assistant coaches, the student managers, the fans, officials, opposing coaches and players.
I feel the exact same way.
I couldn't tell you the score of a single one of the biggest games I've covered or probably many of the details of the games.
But what I can tell you is a lot about the players, coaches, parents, fans, officials and co-workers I now call my friends and all about their families, hopes, dreams and ambitions.
I can't say how much I've enjoyed working with those people over my stint at the paper.
This is a tough time for me to leave Minot. It's the place I was born, raised and will always be the place I call home, and it will be quite some time before it's back to the place that holds such a fond spot in my mind and memory.
It'll be even tougher to leave my family. They have been my biggest fans and supporters during my time at the MDN. Leaving them has been my greatest reservation to taking a new job, but not surprisingly, they were also my biggest supporters in trying a new challenge.
But just because I'm leaving town doesn't mean I won't be back visiting on a regular basis.
And when I do, I hope to see you all at a ballgame.
You're never too old to have a little fun in the toy department.
(Chris Bieri was the Sports Editor for the Minot Daily News. His last day on the job was Wednesday.)