About nine months ago in this space, I said goodbye. I was embarking on a journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan, where I would spend the year studying economic approaches to environmental sustainability.  I promised I would come back, though, and continue to report on the health of the Chesapeake Bay.

I'd called the movers, packed the house, talked to my new bosses about how they want me to cover my beat in the brave new world of Facebook and Twitter.  I was working on story ideas, calling sources and looking forward to deadlines again.

Then last week, I heard that two colleagues - both older than I am, both with families to support - were about to get laid off.  So I volunteered to be laid off instead, so one of them would be spared.  The company will provide me with a severance package that gives me some breathing room to figure out what to do next.  I hope the next thing includes environmental reporting, but my next gig isn't lined up yet.

It was a quick decision, and yet one that had been marinating in my mind for months. In a year when we were challenged to figure out what our heart's desires were and to follow them, I realized, for the first time in 16 years, that some of mine lay outside the newsroom walls.

This year, I wrote a screenplay.  I read good books.  I put more miles on my bike than I did on my car. I picked up my daughter early from school and took her out for ice cream and to the library. I went out with my husband.  I cooked dinner occasionally.  I traveled - to Russia and Argentina and Northern Michigan and New York.   I had time - a luxury foreign to journalists and working mothers - to think about what I want.  And what I want is to keep doing all of those things.  The two journalists in danger of losing their jobs want to keep them; to the extent that I can make that happen, I want to do that, too.

When I got the Bay beat in 2004, I felt like the luckiest person in the newsroom.  I had a job where I got to be out on boats all the time, where I interviewed fascinating people, and where I learned something new every day.  To tell you the truth, I never stopped feeling that way - even when I had the worst seasickness you can imagine, it still beat a day sitting at my desk.  My mother worked at the same job for two decades and was miserable nearly the whole time, so I knew how rare it was to get to do something I loved and get a bit of a suntan in the process.

My heart may not be in the newspaper anymore, but it will always be with my current and former colleagues - terrific journalists, and great people.

I'll be back in Baltimore at the end of May.  Feel free to send any correspondence, love letters, hate mail, life coaching, lunch invitations, freelance work or job offers to rkobell2002@yahoo.com I'll answer.  Seems I'll have some time on my hands.

Sincerely,

Rona Kobell

Chesapeake Bay reporter

The Baltimore Sun