Renewing my energy for energy. And for my whole life.

It has been a year and nine months since I left my job as an energy reporter at the Post-Gazette. Since then, I have read very little about energy. Just now, while flipping through the current issue of The Economist, I came across a story about how financial firms that engage in energy trading are beginning to resist fines from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

And I read it. Just out of interest. Just for fun.

And it was interesting, and it was fun, to read about FERC, and Constellation Energy, and regional transmission organizations.

Which makes me feel that I could get back into energy reporting as a freelancer. Which would help me to feel like that all the relationships I established within the industry during my time at the PG, and all that I learned, would not be going totally to waste.

I need to make better use of all the stuff that has accumulated in my brain during my 60 years on this rock. Freelance energy reporting might be a good start. In fact, writing about energy on Homewood Nation might be the best start.

Memo to myself: generate a list of energy-related, Homewood-based story ideas.

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Meanwhile, I am going to invent a phrase: self-mining.

Self-mining means digging into oneself and extracting value from everything that one finds. Or at least, digging into oneself with that intention.

The value may be in lessons learned. The value may be in something marketable. The value may be in relationships forgotten, but renewable. At the core of self-mining is that the proposition that it's all worth something, somehow. Self-mining is first and foremost about honoring one's life.

I want to excel at self-mining. I mean, it wouldn't do for the guy who invented the term to suck at it, right?

So here's a question for me to work with: What parts of my life have I tended to disregard or to think little of, and how might they be valuable?

The answers of the moment are "energy journalism" and "I could resume it as a freelancer."

It will be interesting to see what other answers I come up with.

What about you? What experiences, skills, relationships, knowledge are you sitting on that you haven't used lately?

The Economic Policy Institute, a D.C.-based think tank with the slogan, "Research for Broadly Shared Prosperity," issues "Economic Snapshots" on a regular basis that provide a quick look at some aspects of the nation's economy. The July 23 snapshot noted that the federal minimum wage, due to increase on July 24 from $5.85 an hour to $6.55, is still less than the minimum in 23 states and the District, and that a full-time worker at that wage still earns below the poverty line for a household of two.

Hm. Should wages, for some jobs, be tied to household size? Probably not. Wages should reflect the value of the work.

Still, it does seem that almost any job worth doing should be worth more than $6.55 an hour. That's only $13,624 a year.

Life at that income level is so painful. Every little thing is a problem.

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I went to Chicago last week for Unity. There was much attention given to blogging and other aspects of digital-age journalism. Before the conference, there was a workshop on "Diversity in the Digital Age," which I would have liked to have attended.

Oh, well. Can't have everything. Yet.

Poynter Online has an interview with Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-TV News Directors Association (RTNDA) in response to their report that both radio and television have seen increases in their percentage of minorities in staff and management. One of the questions was, "What advice do you have for the print side?" Part of Ms. Cochran's answer:

"One avenue for newspapers as well as radio and television stations to pursue is the increased participation of citizen journalists through Web sites and interactive media. This represents a new source of talent that comes from the community and that could bring in a much greater diversity of voices."

Some folks in the business fear that citizen journalists might sully their brand; I fear that they might be exploited by media outlets that are all too happy to have them work for free.

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During the centennial meeting of the National Governors Association last week, the nation's governors sent a letter to Congress urging them to extend renewable energy credits for at least another five years. In the past, the credit has lasted only two or three years, causing companies to shy away from building create large-scale projects such as wind farms, that take a long time to complete.

Will the governors' letter get Congress off the dime? We'll see.