Willing to freeze to spread the message?

Usually the feeling hits me right after I’ve said good-bye to my wife at the airport.

“What in the world am I doing?” I ask myself. “Why can’t I have good enough sense to stay home?”

This time, it hit me early.

As I write this, I’m still a few days away from departure for yet another journey to the former Soviet Union to work with newspapers there.

By the time you read this, I’ll be finished with a two-day conference in Moscow and be preparing to take the night train to a regional city known for its iron mines. Plans call for me to spend two days working with the newspaper there. Next week, I’ll fly to the Ural Mountains to work with papers in two other gritty, industrial cities deep in the Russian Federation.

But as this is being written, a few days away from departure, I’m running into some pre-trip anxiety.

Some of it has to do with the travel itself, which is exhausting, dehumanizing, and about as glamorous as shoveling out a horse stall.

Some of it has to do with the usual self-doubt anyone feels before taking to the podium to speak. Do I have my act together? Do I have something worthwhile to say? What if they’ve heard all this before?

And some of it, this time, has to do with the cold.

After enjoying one of the mildest months of January ever, I’m heading off to a part of the world that is experiencing one of its most brutal winters in history.

A couple of weeks ago, trying to figure out what to pack, I checked the forecasts via the Internet. At that time, highs were in the 20-below-zero range Fahrenheit, with lows in the 33-below-zero neighborhood.

When temperatures get that low, do a few degrees even matter? It’s all deadly after a certain point.

Just before departure, conditions moderated a bit. Now I’m looking at single digit highs and lows in the single digits below zero, though the wind chill still drops it down to 20-below.

So as I review my inventory of longjohns, I find myself pondering those airport questions again and again: What in the world am I doing? Why do I do this?

The short answer is that this work with newspapers trying to attain independence can be tremendously rewarding.

It can be frustrating as well, but there’s a great feeling when you see the lights come on in a seminar participant’s eyes, when someone grabs an idea and runs with it.

And the rush of that moment can become addictive.

Last spring, when I was working with a group of Belarusian journalists in Poland, the editor of a Polish newsmagazine came up to me and asked about my motivation.

“So,” he said a little too smugly, “is this some sort of American hobby, spreading freedom and democracy around the world?”

“No,” I said, surprising even myself. “It’s a drug.”[[In-content Ad]]