Advice: Take Your Work Home With You

Most of us have heard this advice at one time or another:  "Don't take your work home with you." 

Ha!  That's easier said than done.

Well, for me, at least.

Let me start first my admitting I have a great fear for heights.  Not just up in a plane, but on a roller coaster, on a mountain, on a roof and sadly, even on a bridge.   I just have this awful fear of falling.   I blame this fear on my father who has never traveled outside of Texas and Louisiana because he refuses to get on an airplane.  I'm the same way.  I fly when only necessary, often with liquor to kill the panic attacks.

As if my fear of flying wasn't already bad enough, I was assigned to a story on Wednesday that focused on the crash of a jet in Oklahoma City that killed five men.  One popular theory is a bird may have been caught in an engine and that forced the aircraft to go down.
What? A bird!?  "These people can't be serious", I mumbled to myself after getting this assignment.   

Well, my dear friends, it's true.  While the National Transportation Safety Board tries to figure out if a bird is to blame for this week's crash, a look at past accident reports on the agency's site reveals a significant number of accidents that are blamed on birds flying into engines.

Since 1973 the NTSB has issued 16 safety recommendations to the FAA about this issue.
Click here to view my report.    You can click here to view the accident reports we discovered.

Great!  Now in addition to all my other worries on board a plane... add birds to the list.

This is just one of a number of fears I take home with me after leaving work.   I'm afraid to change a tire on the side of the road because I fear being hit by an on-coming car.  I've covered that story before.

I'm afraid to eat lemons at a restaurant now because of Amy Lester's story on dirty lemons last month.  Click here to check that out!

I'm afraid to go into convenience stores after 10 p.m. because most robberies and attacks I've covered happen after this time.
I think you get the idea and the bottom line is my work can sometimes scares me.  Or at least puts a scare into me, and I think that's a good thing.

As a general assignments reporter who covers a lot of crime, accidents and fires, I learn my lessons by watching the mistakes other people make. I buckle up when I get in the car.  I don't leave candles burning when I go to bed.  I have renter's insurance.  I look over my shoulder when using an ATM and I use the Better Business Bureau to check out a company's reputation. 
The nice thing about my job is I also get to pass this advice and these lessons learned to you, the viewer, in my report.

I guess taking my work home with me isn't such a bad idea, but it's still enough to keep me on the ground and off an airplane.

-Rusty