The key to being a good journalist is self-loathing. I’m talking about the realization that what you have now, what you know, what you essentially are to the very core of your soul is not enough and will never be enough, without the accompaniment of some outside entity.

This zeitgeist is a ghost you chase throughout your career. You find traces of it in the stories you report on, but their faint scent is fleeting and some days even a bloodhound couldn’t help you on the hunt. So you loathe the status quo and keep moving, changing, adapting, learning, growing, devolving, degenerating, rebuilding, reassessing, reaffirming that you can muster the chutzpah to paddle into another wave of the socioeconomic surge.

That is the wild goose chase that gets you out of bed in the morning. The mythical carrot—a mirage of an intelligible Truth—that motivates you to put one foot in front of the other on the neverending path. Much like the most interesting man in the world stays thirsty, my friends, you’re driven by an unquenchable curiosity.