By time you’ve turned to this page in the newspaper, syphered through the other stories on the website or the timed post on Facebook was released after the other links, you know The Amboy News, The Mendota Reporter, Kip Cheek and I won a few awards.

A few is humble.

Screaming from the mountain top, we won 11 (and one of them happened because we won so many others), is pride.

This brings me to my biggest question when events, success, like this occurs. How are you supposed to be, or act, when awards or honors are received?

I’ve learned over the last 5-10 years, everything in life is walked on a tight rope.

If you yell when you’re excited or passionate, you’re too aggressive and abrasive, but if you don’t raise your voice to a certain level, you’re quiet and timid.

What’s the certain level? Who has a decibel meter in their pocket?

If you take one scoop of ice cream, ‘Oh, are you dieting?’

If you have three scoops of ice cream, ‘Hey, leave some for the rest of us.’

Are two scoops the perfect amount? No, from experience, it isn’t. The range of comments go all over the place in the same manner as when you don’t eat the ice cream quickly on a hot day.

Likewise, the acrobatic fine line, can be said about earning honors and rewards.

If you’re happy, excited, thrilled, delighted, electrified or exhilarated you were recognized, especially by others in your industry, it’s viewed as gloating, starving for attention, or throwing it in other’s face you did something that they did not.

However, if you don’t say anything at all and just soak in the fact you’ve busted your butt every day, all day…by taking phone calls at 1 a.m., driving two-hour road trips for a 10-minute event, fielding calls or messages for 10 stories at the same time and keeping them all untangled to make sure they reach the right page, staring at InDesign until your eyes have crisscrossed more times than Kris Kross while 98 percent of your community is sleeping, battling to make sure everything newsworthy makes the news, dealing with company changes, waiting on other people for needed elements of your position, getting in a bind and forcing co-workers to wait on you because you have five other jobs to feed your bank account and your passion for what you love to do, going to war with Facebook daily, debating with outsiders of whether a comma, a word, a noun, a quote, a thought was in the correct place when you’ve earned a degree and been in the business for 20 years and they haven’t…you should say more and be boisterous about your accomplishments.

But what did the previous paragraph make you think?

It may have made you think if someone thought like that, they’re grumpy, it’s just another person complaining about their job, yeah don’t tell us about all of this, or really, na, that doesn’t sound right.

Then it all comes back to two things.

Being humble.

Being prideful.

If you’ve had a job, a position, a career for a substantial amount of time, you love it. There is a reason you wake up every day and go to the office. There is a reason you answered the phone call instead of ignoring or pushing the decline button. There is a reason you filled up your gas tank, you block your schedule to focus on InDesign and you talk to people about every aspect of your profession whether you disagree with them or not.

And after all of it, you’re humbled to be doing something you love to do and have been given talents most don’t even realize are talents.

The other side, the pride, is why does anyone else matter besides you.

You put in the work. You handled your responsibilities. You dealt with the pressure. Why not shove awards in faces?

This is the only time I can think of where I finally cut the tight rope.

I don’t want to pridefully figuratively scream at people, look at me, which some will think that’s what this column is, but more so, humbly, prove to myself that it’s worth it.

It’s worth it to be where I’m at. Doing what I’m doing. Appreciating the lessons I’m learning on a daily basis from people who have done what I’m doing for two decades longer.

The awards are great and thank you Illinois Press Association and the voters from Georgia, but my real reward is getting to know those people on the other end of the phone call at 1 a.m., pushing myself to keep creating, and being myself, more humble than proud.