Kismet and the dork: An origin story

Do the stars ever truly align? I think so.

Journalism is in my DNA. I live it. I breathe it. I need it. And I always kind of knew it.

When I was probably 11, my best friend, Sami, and I founded a neighborhood newspaper after discovering what we were certain — or, at least our imaginations were certain — was old plane wreckage along a nearby bike trail. It was super-definitely old HVAC piping, but listen…we were trailblazers and couldn’t be swayed. I don’t remember what we named our paper, but we put a lot of effort into it. We spent days searching the area for more clues about the plane crash. Up and down different bike paths, off into the thicket, soaking our sneakers as we scoured the creek’s edges for evidence; we literally left no stone unturned, much to the irritation of our mothers who were left to dry out our shoes.

Eventually, we came to the supposition that the lack of evidence was evidence of its own, and the theory of a cover-up of unfolded in our little reporter notebooks. Why was no one talking about this plane crash? What was being hidden? It was time to reach out to area residents for comment about our findings. I know we canvassed the area for folks to interview, but I don’t recall who all Sami and I talked to besides our friend Hilary. I also can’t remember exactly what Hil said, other than, to paraphrase: There's no plane down there, you guys.

Photo by Lisa Grouette

Soon, we’d give up our newspaper gig in favor of creating a soap opera with Sami’s and my Jem and Barbie dolls, but never would I have guessed, the journalism seed was planted.

Long after I put my Barbie away for the last time but just before my 17th birthday, after failing his jewelry class, I enrolled in a summertime photography class offered by my art teacher Rohn Luker. I took 40 bucks from my bank account that I’d earned working at a popular taco joint and spent it on the class. The fee also paid for four rolls of film, a pack of Kodak E-paper, and three weeks’ use of a Pentax K-1000.

The very second I saw my first image emerge as the photo paper soaked in the pungent developer solution, I was in love with the art.

A socially-awkward dork to my core, I had a handful of friends, but my rank in the high school hierarchy was near the bottom of the rung. No matter, though…first semester of my senior year, I lost myself in a school-year photography class. The darkroom became my oasis, experimenting with developing techniques and chemical manipulation of images. I was getting good at it. I was acing the class. Mr. Luker was a mentor and a phenomenal inspiration; he believed in my abilities as a photographer and challenged and encouraged me to always do better with every photo taken.

I entered and was accepted to photo shows. I had a 4.0 in that class. I was better than many of my classmates. I was coming into my own.

Second semester came, and the photography class filled up before I had a chance to apply for it as an elective. I bawled my eyes out at Mr. Luker’s desk. There was nothing he could do to console me.

On an open period one afternoon, I took a quick drive. I began lamenting about my having missed out on the class. My eyes glassy with tears, I passed by a creek and thought about my days as a sixth-grade journalist. Wait. Was I having an epiphany? The Cranberries song “Dreams” was blaring through my speakers as I realized: This is what I want to do forever, and who’s to tell me I can’t? I shared my realization with my mother, who followed up with a Minolta XG-1 camera as a graduation gift.

I was unstoppable.

I entered our local community college with one plan, and that was a photojournalism major with a communications minor. I wanted to create art, but I wanted it to also tell stories. I took a position with campus newspaper LOGOS, which among other Greek words, translates to “divine reason.” Fitting, because I felt like I’d found my purpose.

I also took an advanced photography class led by guess who? Mr. Luker. He’d been an adjunct instructor for years, and I never knew. I thrived. I excelled. I killed it. I helped my classmates figure things out. This was my calling. Between this class and my photo assignments for LOGOS, I’d be gone hours upon hours on location and in the darkroom. Gone so long, my worried mother would ask me to please find a phone to call her and let her know I was okay each night I spent at school.

Three months into my second semester, my Grama Jilek, who was also my very best friend, called me with much excitement. The Globe Gazette, my hometown newspaper and the largest paper in North Iowa, was hiring for a part-time photographer. I was working at Walmart selling cameras and VCRs by then, but this opportunity seemed like it was made for me. “Student applicants welcome.” I called the number the next morning and was given an interview right away.

Armed with a clunky, hastily assembled portfolio, I slipped on my dress shoes and headed out to secure my new job. I thought, anyway…

The then-photo editor was impressed with my work. He told me so. I waited and waited. Second phone call. Yes! My second interview was scheduled for Tuesday, March 28. I couldn’t be more excited or more confident I would land this job. A bona fide photojournalist. Except that the Saturday before, March 25, would be the day my beloved grama died unexpectedly. I was in pieces. There’s no way I could make the second interview. I called to cancel. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be after all. I dropped out of school, shadowed by grief, and joined the workforce.

Let’s jump forward a little over a decade. Now in my 30s, I was miserable and stuck in a toxic, dead-end job at a local insurance agency. I had since sold my Minolta, but I’d picked up a point-and-shoot Panasonic camera that I used for grabbing snapshots of girls’ nights out and birthday parties. One day, a melancholy me decided to get out of the house and, on a whim, I grabbed my camera and drove to the park to go for walk. I hadn’t thought about photography in what seemed like a millennia.

I walked along a trail by a river and started shooting everything that caught my eye. It all came flooding back to me. The creativity in my mind was swooshing about. The light, the angles, the framing…all of it was second nature. Operating the camera was like riding a bike. I glided through the rest of my walk on a cloud.

As I dipped my feet back into the photography waters, the only blockade I faced was the end of the analog world. With film enlargers and chemicals now by the wayside, I had to learn digital editing. I taught myself quickly, and I began posting work to Facebook. The more I applied myself and sunk time into the craft, the better I got. I was once again thriving in the art. I was once again excelling. I was once again killing it. This was a balm for my aching soul.

Eventually, I’d open my own photography studio, Astoria Photography, selling art and offering portrait services. I quickly became very busy in the best way.

A few years into my new side business, a longtime client of the agency, who happened to be a photo and online editor at the Globe Gazette, started talking photography shop with me. I’d befriended him and his wife earlier after a few very fun social encounters, and he’d become familiar with my photo work from social media. I was somewhat known among my peers for my landscape pieces and was making a name for myself as a small business owner. I had again begun entering and being accepted to art shows. My friend said he was a fan, which I took as a huge compliment.

A few more years passed, and I got a call — out of the blue — from that same friend. Did I want to be a part-time photographer for the Globe Gazette? … Are you kidding me? “No pressure,” he said. He was creating the position specifically for me, so I wasn’t in competition for anyone. I didn’t even think before I said, “fuck yes.” Not the most professional of responses, but certainly the most honest. I was now doubly employed AND had my own business. My goodness, was it ever surreal.

My new byline impressed my family and friends. I was so proud and wanted to learn as much as I could to become the best I could be. My first assignment was a little rough around the edges but fine. My second assignment landed me on the front page. An incumbent Democratic state representative had staved off a challenge by a wealthy Republican socialite.

As time passed, my day job at the insurance agency had become unbearable. My abusive boss had become so belligerent, I could barely bring myself to go to the office. My night job was my only respite, but assignments weren’t as plenty as I’d have liked. Eventually, I asked my friend, who was now my supervisor at the paper, for a referral because I needed to leave the agency. He readily obliged. Things at the agency were bad. Like bad, bad.

It couldn’t have been a month after asking my friend for a reference that he messaged me about a full-time news clerk position at the Globe. Not only could I assist the newsroom, my role as a photographer wouldn’t be affected. Holy crap. I sighed with relief and cried the night I submitted my resume. As a present employee, my application was merely a formality, and I was offered the job right away. I was a little scared to leave my decade-long position as senior agency specialist at the insurance office, but I was more scared of staying. Not only because my work environment was a nightmare, but because I’d been given a second chance working full time at the job I missed out on all those years ago.

I happily accepted the position and settled into the newsroom with ease. Was this heaven? No, this was journalism?

As I came into myself at my new job, I got to chatting with my same friend. I told him the story of how I’d actually applied for a job there so many years ago to be a part-time photographer. He started doing a little math in his head. He’d been an applicant for the same job, he remembered. After I withdrew my name from the running when my grama died, he moved forward in the process. Wait. He ended up at the Globe, taking the job I had been vying for and he ended up becoming my friend and hiring me there all those years later? Holy crap. I thought back to Sami and our fake newspaper. I thought back to my college and my real newspaper. I thought back to Mr. Luker. The Cranberries echoed back through my head just as it had blared through my car speakers as a kid: “Oh my life is changing every day, in every possible way…” Is this kismet?

In less than a year as a full-timer at the Globe, an editor who believed in my potential promoted me from news clerk to breaking news reporter. I still got to take photos, all the while my new position unlocked a new talent within me: writing. Next, I was on to crime and courts. Within a few more months, while still taking photos, I became a general-assignment reporter, writing features.

Just over two years after my first promotion, I was offered the position of local news editor and photo editor.

Although I was now in my dream job, the latest promotion meant relinquishing many of my photography duties, which was hard. But the new job was challenging and time consuming and needed my full attention. I gradually let loose of the shutter button and let the reporters begin producing their own art for their stories.

As I sunk my teeth into my new role, I once again thrived. I excelled. I killed it.

Three and a half years later, I was basking in the sunshine of my work. I was proud of myself, proud of my reporters, and others were proud of me as well.

Then… blamo!

On March 27, 2025, my job was eliminated. Budget cuts. I grieved the loss of my career the same way I would had it been a person. It was devastating. Who was I without my place in the journalism world?

In between job applications, I focused on honing my talents: writing and photography. I was accepted to an art show, began publishing columns on Substack, joined the National Writers Union, and was even invited to join the Iowa Writers Collaborative. I was in my element, but I wasn’t making a living.

As the weeks turned into months, I reluctantly began applying for jobs outside the journalism industry.

I talked to my stellar job coach and longtime friend Justin, (side note: if you need a job coach, let me connect you!) who helped me discover that a trip outside of the journalism world didn’t mean I was abandoning it completely. Taking another position was just a means to an end while I searched for my new dream job.

Resumes and rejections and rejections and resumes was my new norm. I wrote as much as I could and worked on art as often as possible to keep myself sane as I drew unemployment and pinched my pennies.

Close to three months after losing my job, in June — on Friday the 13th of all days — I was in a Zoom meeting with fellow Iowa Writers Collaborative contributors when my phone rang. It was my previous editor. “What could he be calling for now,” I thought. “To take away my birthday?” I forwarded the call to voicemail and joked with my cohort that maybe he was calling to offer me my job back.

A few minutes after the Zoom meeting came to a close, I reluctantly listened to my voicemail. “Please call me as soon as you see this,” it said. I assumed he needed something from me. A password I forgot to leave behind or something. I called back, and nope.

Would you believe he was literally calling to offer me my beloved job back? Just as I had joked about mere minutes before?

A resounding “fuck yes” came out of my mouth. Again, not the most professional of responses, but again, certainly the most honest. We agreed on a start date and that I would pick up right where I had left off.

It wasn’t my boss’ fault I got cut, and it definitely wasn’t his idea. There were no hard feelings, and in fact, it was quite warming to hear they just couldn’t run the newsroom without me and had reversed their decision to let my position go dark.

Photo by Lisa Grouette

Best of all, along with my editor duties, my boss wanted me to start taking photos again as often as I was able. It was as surreal as when I had first accepted a position with the Globe. My dream job was realized once again. All of a sudden, I was back where I had been trying to be since I was a kid. Back where I was meant to be.

Where I can thrive. Where I can excel. Where I vow to keep totally killing it.

Eleven-year-old Lisa would be a happy, happy girl.

Lisa Grouette is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, a group of Iowa writers, authors, and content producers. If you enjoy hearing from Iowa voices, please consider helping to broaden their reach with a paid subscription. Your support goes a long way.