AS FAR AS MY BLISS WENT, all I really knew was that I agreed with Lloyd Dobler in the movie Say Anything: "I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career. I don't want to do that."

I quickly concluded that being a reporter might be my true bliss. A few "informational interviews" later, I scored a meeting at The Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader, a 9,000-circulation broadsheet published in a tiny town on the northeast tip of Washington's soggy Olympic Peninsula.

The day I arrived, the front page showed a large photo of the local grocery store with some caption about there being too many seagulls on the roof. In my interview, the editor said that my qualifications—three English classes—suggested that maybe I should start at a smaller paper. Like in a town without a grocery store? I wanted to ask.

A month later, I turned to photography. I didn't go so far as to pull my darkroom equipment out of the attic, but I did admire my most recent photos, 12 rolls taken while studying in Nepal two years earlier.

As I had done before, I wrote nature photographer Art Wolfe, again offering to be his assistant. He declined—for the third time. After no reply from a couple of other pros, I launched my freelance career by giving slide shows at retirement homes.

The shows began when I clicked to the opening slide of Nepal, a gorgeous overhead shot of the Kathmandu Valley in full spring bloom, and ended roughly half an hour later, when the first of the retirees fell asleep. Normally, I'd then collect my $50-to-$150 fee and leave, but one fateful afternoon a youthful retiree heard about my dream. Her son knew the photo editor of The Seattle Times, and she offered to arrange a portfolio review.

A magic door was swinging open! A few days later, clutching my single page of slides, I stood in the middle of the hurricane that was the Times newsroom.

"You must be Eric," the photo editor said, striding toward me. As I remember, he had wavy gray hair and wore a multi-pocketed khaki vest; he looked like he'd just been hunting big game in Africa.

He threw my slide sheet on the light table and dropped to inspect the center photo. Without removing the loupe from his eye, he jumped to an image in the upper left, then hopscotched all over. I smiled proudly during the nanosecond that he inspected my best image, a tight shot of four Newar women clutching an overexposed white blob that might or might not have been a baby. After no more than 30 seconds, he tilted upright, handed me my Kodachrome, and said, "I'm sorry, you have no future in photojournalism."

Well, slam.