The last paginator.

My interests have a way of gravitating toward the obscure and antiquated. I suppose it makes sense that my intended profession would, too.

Having spent a summer living the working life of a professional newsman, I've come to realize -- more so than any classroom or internship ever could have shown -- that I've chosen a dying profession. I'm not talking about journalism, specifically. Journalism will never die. The news industry will never die. But my job, pagination, will come close to extinction.

Paginators build the print pages of a newspaper, laying out all of the photo, graphic and text elements. This is no easy job. It requires a long attention span, strong work ethic and a masochistic personality. But print media is a bit worse for the wear lately, mostly due to the Internet. The extent of pagination that will take place during this blog post will be when I press the "publish post" button.

But this makes me appreciate what I do that much more. Pagination is a dying, lost art -- like straight-razor shaves and cobbling. I've learned my trade through a similar system of apprenticeship. For someone who contemplates the past obsessively, it's rewarding to be a part of something so time-honored. I just can't say how long paginators will be around for. Maybe 40 years from now, you'll find me slumped over a keyboard, wearing a green celluloid visor, punching up the last print pages of the last print publication.