There are not that many great journalists in Chicago these days. I count Mark Anderson as one of them.

In a city that has a long history of great journalism, the situation these days is pretty poor.

I was sorry to read Mark Anderson’s blog post this morning in which he announced he was no longer writing for NBC’s Ward Room online site.

He has been battling cancer for a while.

Mark has been a great resource for a blogger like me. His opinion pieces are sharp, well-written and I always feel like I learned something after reading them.

For an amateur writer like me, that is something to aspire to.

Plus, he always takes my calls when I need some explanation of the tons of stuff I don’t understand.

Here is his post today.

In the words of that great American philosopher, Kurt Vonnegut: And so it goes.

What I had come to understand was one of the best opportunities in Chicago political journalism is lost to me now. It had been coming for a while, but I had tried mightily not to see its arrival. So for months I kept pretending that one day I’d get better enough to get back to my writing desk and once again start fielding phone calls from dozens of folks who had outstanding and important stories for me to help tell–only to end up never getting strong enough to pick up the phone again.

And so, the other day, I pulled the plug, and am officially no longer writing and reporting for NBC Chicago’s Ward Room political blog.

Damn it.

The reason, of course? Cancer. The doctors are telling me my timeline is growing short, and every day has been a growing struggle against something I expect will bring me down in a matter of months–or  more than a year, if I’m lucky perhaps. I’ve done as good a job as I can since I was diagnosed last year in keeping the true face of my situation from friends and acquaintances, not to mention those I worked with as a reporter.

But the truth is, it ain’t getting any better, and it’s a damn hard blow to any sense of who you are when you find yourself spending long days in either too much pain or too much fog from painkillers to be able to even write a simple sentence.

As I’ve said before, I considered writing for Ward Room to be both a privilege and an opportunity, if for no other reason than it provided me the chance to write about Chicago and state politics as I saw fit on a mainstream news platform without overt editorial interference or opposition.

And for the short year or so I had the opportunity, I’m proud of the work I was able to do. Ward Room allowed me to go after essentially any topic I wanted, and I tended to go after what I saw as those critical but under-the-radar stories so often underplayed or ignored by Chicago’s political media glitterati.

Whether it was inside baseball stories such as the Chicago City Council’s attempt to shroud itself from any ethics oversight whatsoever, the ongoing but often little-noticed work the Council’s Progressive Reform Caucus undertook to push back on the Mayor’s agenda, or the bigger but complex issues such as the relationship between pensions, pay-to-play and campaign finance in the highest offices in the city and state or just the series of broken promises and cruel policies enacted by politicians here or downstate, what mattered was the chance to shine a light on those in the power and the suffering of those who aren’t.

And, thankfully, many more without room to list.

Kudos and heartfelt gratitude must again be given to my direct editor at Ward Room, Andrew Greiner, along with the spoken and unspoken support and encouragement offered by the likes of Station Manager Frank Whittaker, reporters Mary Ann Ahern and Carol Marin and a number of others who had my back every day.

And to the numerous activists, community residents and, yes, political figures I’ve met who get up every day committed to the fight of making the world of those they represent and hope to speak for can find a better life and a better world through their tireless efforts. In the end, you know who you are.

Needless to say, I loved doing it. But it was never enough–and never could be enough–to push back the growing darkness amid the uncertain future that lies ahead of me. Writing’s hard now, and time is apparently short. Decisions must be made, and new choices embraced.

I’ve wanted to launch Chicago Survivor for quite a while now, but never had the time nor the energy to pull off two full-time writing destinations–even when I wasn’t covering politics full time and was just making my nut doing freelance for pay. It’s got a long back-story rooted in my desire to share stories of complex childhood trauma that somehow doesn’t seem so relevant now but still represents an idea too good to go to waste.

Even in my most public moments while at Ward Room–whether it was on TV, being interviewed on radio or finding one of my stories used in campaign literature dropped off in the hallway of my apartment building, I was never really part of the Chicago political journalism establishment. Put me in a room with the top 20 reporters and writers about politics in this town, and half of them wouldn’t know my name. And the other half probably wouldn’t considered much of what I did “journalism”.

Finally, if you’re here, chances are you’ve read me at least once while I was at Ward Room. And for that, you deserve my highest gratitude and deepest thanks. Any writer–whether writing from a position of strength and happiness on a sunny morning or pushing words out through tears from pain of any kind–is deeply grateful whenever he or she knows someone is listening on the other side of the page or screen.

So, going forward, Chicago Survivor will be my writing and thinking home. It may not be much, but it holds one distinct advantage over every other publication I’ve had the chance to write for: It may not be offering me any pay, but it’ll be the first time I write solely for myself and not for the benefit of anyone other person, organization or bottom line on a yearly profit-and-loss statement.

Let’s see if I’m good enough to pass my own editorial standards as I figure out what it means to live the part of my life I was never really prepared for.

And, in the end, thanks for reading. As always.

P.S. Special shout outs to the irrepressible @joannaklonsky for always knowing when to kick my ass over what stories really needed to be covered in this town but weren’t, and to Scott Smith (@ourmaninchicago) for his worldly and wise counsel.

P.S.S. There’s new folks holding the keys over at Ward Room now. They’re not likely to be as bloody single-minded as I was, but they probably have something interesting to say or two. Give them a read, will ya?

Mark’s Chicago Survivor blog can be found here.