How long has it been now?

Fifteen years?

Sixteen?

I sat down this morning and tried to figure out exactly how long have I been a part of the never-ending carnival of insanity known as freelance television production. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even know, the past however many years have blurred by so fast there’s hardly even time to figure it out.

This strange career started innocently enough as a part time job as a cable-coiler at the Boston Garden during Celtics games. The job paid $50 a night, $25 of which was spent on parking, and at least $15 on gas. I probably took home about $200 for the entire season. Back then I wasn’t a very good businessman, but back then that’s what you did to pay your dues.

During that time, my ‘real’ job, my day job that paid the bills suddenly disappeared, as the cable company I was working for was swallowed up by a larger cable company. I decided to try my hand in the murky waters of freelancing until I could find another ‘real’ job.

That was fifteen years ago, or maybe sixteen; in a time before cell phones, before Facebook and blogs, before the Internet, before everything was soullessly digital.

Through a combination of dumb luck, being at the right place at the right time, good fortune, and a stubborn streak a mile wide, somehow that part time cable coiling job turned into a career unlike any other. I rose through the ranks from utility to audio assist (or A2) to audio mixer (or A1). Phone calls trickled in, and a world of opportunity slowly opened up. “Can you go to Cleveland tomorrow to mix a football game?”

“Sure!”

“Are you available to work all next week in Florida on a talk show?”

“Absolutely!”

And nothing else mattered. Any prior plan, promise or commitment was expendable when that Skynet pager went off. The freelance community, a tight knit bunch of misfits became my family. We’d work on Thanksgiving, eating cold turkey sandwiches before a AAA hockey game that nobody was watching, and we’d feel good about it. Christmas? A bowl game in Hawaii. Birthday? Winter X Games. Easter, Mother’s Day, whatever the occasion, they were all spent under the sickly glow of fluorescent lights, in front of an audio console, trapped inside a TV truck somewhere with someone counting backwards in a loud voice at me.

Nothing else mattered.

Summer and Winter Olympics came and went, NASCAR events came and went, a slew of sporting events came and went, World Wrestling Federation, during my tenure to be renamed World Wrestling Entertainment events came and went. Opportunities to work in England, Japan, Italy, Iraq and Afghanistan arose.

While all those events were coming and going, a few other things were happening. First (and worst) television was growing up. The so-called easy shows started getting harder. Gradually things at work started being less fun and more work. ESPN was growing fast, FOX Sports appeared and started buying up regional sports broadcasters, and suddenly TV production was big business.

Still, nothing else mattered.

Other things were changing, most notably travel. Airlines started cutting flights, and raising prices. 9/11 happened, and suddenly, for a while, everyone and anyone that traveled by air was under suspicion. Now, we had to take off our shoes before we could board a plane, and now we had to get to the airport hours early to make flights. A pain in the ass, for sure, but even still, shoeless and under suspicion, nothing else mattered.

Years flew by. Boston became Detroit became Seattle became the next city, all a blur in the night. While we were out laughing and making TV, scientists and other propeller-heads locked away in their laboratories were devising ways to turn actual analog pictures and sounds into a series of numbers that could be recorded on magnetic disks. The Internet flourished. Cell phones went from an accessory of the rich to a necessity for the masses, making everyone instantly accessible at all hours. I started a blog. The world shrunk. More scientists invented better and faster ways to turn pictures and sound into ones and zeros, and suddenly, the relatively simple world of analog TV was over, replaced by high definition picture and hyper realistic surround sound. In the midst of the transition to all those ones and zeros, somehow, the fun part of making TV disappeared.

Now, every production is treated as if it was the Superbowl, every broadcast is the most important thing ever, and every engineer needs to know everything in a field that is evolving by the hour. What used to be covered by five camera and four tape machines now takes two production trucks, upwards of twelve high definition cameras, ridiculously expensive fiber optic cable, mysterious black boxes, and as many hard disk recorders as can fit in the truck. The new high-def-all-digital-all-work-no-fun TV mantra evolved to be ‘Do More For Less, Do It Right, And Do It Now!’

Fifteen or sixteen years later the grind still grinds on. My freelance family has gotten older, wrinkled, tired and in many instances,  jaded. Some have passed on, a few others have jumped off the never-ending carousel for something called a ‘normal life’. For those of us still mainlining as freelancers, still on the road and living the dream, the fun is still out there, though a certain, inevitable been-there-done-that attitude creeps in over time. And now, after being a road warrior for longer than I can remember, the one lesson I’ve taken away from it, above all others is, “Pay attention. Everything else matters!”