Jordan Smith has been writing on occasion for Living Letters since its inception. Each time she has shared with us that her heart’s desire has been to serve God as a writer/journalist in the unique places and positions that He has led her. So, she continues to seek and serve Him even amid changing circumstances. 

A lot can change in a year. It’s cliche, but all cliches have an element of truth to them. My life looked very different this time in 2024. 

If you are new here, or maybe just don’t remember me, my name is Jordan Smith-Wagner. I used to just be Jordan Smith, but that’s just one of the changes that has happened. I’ve been contributing posts to Living Letters since December 2019, when I was a freshman at Liberty University studying journalism. After graduating in 2022, I moved across the country to Wyoming to take a job at a newspaper. 

Reporting, copy editing, and writing took up the better part of my life for the last two-and-a-half-ish years. I spent the rest of the time trying to acclimate to an entirely new world. 

The big things first: I quit my job at the newspaper at the end of last October. Roughly two months prior to that, I got married. For about six months prior to my August wedding, I was trying to wrangle my mental health into something manageable. 

All in all, 2024 wrung out every eventful moment it could. It was one of those years in which the highs were high and the lows were very low. 

I had been debating what I wanted to do about my job since this time last year. The newspaper at which I worked, the Casper Star-Tribune, had seen a lot of turnover since June 2023, when the editor-in-chief left. Everything seemed uncertain and strange. I didn’t feel that I had the skills as a young journalist to navigate those changes confidently. If I was a news veteran of 22 years, maybe. But not as a 22-year-old. I put on a brave face and tried to show up and do my best work. 

Another notable thing was that I had started dating someone in 2023, and he and I were getting more serious. When you are single, it’s enough to be unhappy to get you to make a major life change. But in a relationship, you can’t just think about what makes you alone unhappy. I really liked him (and still do), so I decided to stay in Casper, at least for the meanwhile. 

In March, a new editor-in-chief started at the paper. We all had high hopes for him and for each other. It felt like the turning of a new page, and I was eager to return to some professional stability – and tackle bigger, tougher projects that I felt had been too risky while we looked for a permanent editorial leader. 

Throughout the spring, it became clear that the mental health issues I had been dealing with were not just a “season.” I loved my boyfriend – by that time, he was my fiancé — but work hadn’t improved as I had hoped it would. I wasn’t growing as much as I had been when I started this job. There wasn’t a light at the end of the tunnel that I could see. Was this really God’s plan? 

Discouragement soon turned to depression, and doubt gradually shifted into anxiety. Frustration blossomed. Bitterness had a wonderful soil to grow in. The high highs and low lows I mentioned earlier began to shine. This was supposed to be the happiest time of my life – getting engaged, planning a wedding, starting a new life with someone I really loved. I wanted to stay with him, and due to some personal commitments he made for his job, he wanted to stay in Casper for another few years.  

It continued this same way for much of the summer, even as I hosted friends and family and planned our wedding. 

And of course, my writing took a turn for the worse. Stories that once took me an hour to write, took me all day. Making one phone call completely drained me. 

I want to speak of this briefly and vaguely, for which I hope you will forgive me. The editor who had started in March and the rest of the newsroom were not clicking. I’m not pointing fingers. I am speaking factually. The trust we so critically needed to have in one another was paper thin. 

I think I’ve illustrated enough about how difficult last year was for me. Let me pause to tell you about some of the good moments: My husband and I got married on a beautiful mountaintop in Wyoming. Our friends and family celebrated us so well, and supported me when I had trouble supporting myself. The weather was lovely. All the stress that had taken over me trying to plan everything melted away. I’m so grateful for that day, and for everyone who loved us through it. 

After my wedding, it was like the clouds parted in my mind. I realized that I was severely unhappy, and for what? I had tried to tough it out long enough and had done everything I could possibly think of to make it work. It was time to leave my job. My husband agreed wholeheartedly. He knows better than anyone the trials and pain of last year. The realization nearly made me go limp with relief.  

By this time in my tenure as a reporter, I had covered almost every beat imaginable, but my full-time job was writing about city government. This is an essential beat for any local journalism outlet. I had tried my hand at it and found that I wasn’t half-bad. But I didn’t have any more room to grow there.

At the beginning of October, I put in my four weeks. After a very eventful final four weeks, I walked out of the office for the last time. My last day was very lovely, as my sweet coworkers threw me a going away party. They even got me roses.

I am no longer working in local journalism, something that had defined the better part of my years in Wyoming.  People will sometimes ask me what I think about the state of local journalism. (Some people call it a crisis.) Generally, there is a lot of instability – and not a lot of money.  

I find that there are usually three approaches people take when discussing local journalism. The first is wishful reminiscing. “Well, back in MY day …” That leaves a lot to be desired because no one can go back to “your day.” 

Second, the hand-wringing. “Local journalism MUST be saved! We have to fix this! It’s dying as we speak!” It’s not dying everywhere, and if you want to help fix it, you have to support a form of local journalism, even if you can’t contribute much. Just talking to the journalists in your community to let them know what you want to see is a contribution.  

The third and final approach is the lover of hypotheticals and experimenting with different models. “We could try this new model to address a rapidly changing world.” No model is perfect, and local journalism doesn’t necessarily have the time to be trying ten different things to find one solution. Sometimes, it’s a slow grind of doing the everyday work to rebuild, rather than finding one “Eureka!” fix. 

Journalists all over the country are finding that the industry is more and more unstable. Turnover is high. Layoffs are frequent. I am grateful that I was able to keep a job in the nearly three years I worked at the newspaper, because not everyone made it that long. 

But I have a lot of peace about leaving my job. I didn’t immediately step into another job. November and December I took off to rest and recuperate. The time was necessary and grounding. By December 31, I felt like a brand new person and was actually excited about the new year. 

As of right now, I am pursuing freelance copy editing and reporting work, as well as some more creative pursuits outside of writing. There’s no other news outlet in Casper that I would want to work for, and really no other full-time jobs I could see myself being happy at. Freelance work would allow me to use my skills in a more flexible way.

I have no grand, conclusive insight to offer about God’s plan, His timing, or why He allows things to happen the way He does. My time as a local journalist in Wyoming was pockmarked with a lot of troubles, but also a lot of growth. When you’re a reporter, you have to listen to what the community wants and write as a service to them, to keep them informed. But as a Christian, I also realized how that aligns with our ultimate purpose of serving Christ in all we do. 

I still wonder a lot what He is doing, and what the future has in store. However, I’m so grateful for His love and faithfulness throughout 2024, and I know wherever He leads my husband and me next, what I learned about serving the Lord here will propel me in current jobs. Ultimately, I know He wrote a much better story for that year than I ever could.