It’s a question that many people are asking at the Asian American Journalists Association conference this year. What’s next? For newspapers? For myself? That was the question I was set on exploring today. And it seems many others were asking that question, as well.

I started off chatting with Joe Grimm, recruiter extraordinaire, formerly of the Detroit Free Press and now with Michigan State University School of Journalism, among other organizations, for his thoughts on what might come next for me. Joe is a straight-shooter, a clear thinker, and a good man. If someone can offer great advice with the best of intentions, it’s Joe.

I’m a freelance writer. Life circumstances nudged me to stay at home with my daughter and to quit my newspaper job, just a few months before major layoffs and buyouts hit my newspaper in San Antonio. I had some ambivalence about the move, because I had invested so much — 12 years of my life — to a newspaper career. Like many journalists, I had paid my dues, working free in some cases, to build a portfolio. I hopscotched across the nation to parlay experience into more experience, knowledge into more knowledge, and connections into more connections. I had given up a lot to stay home with my daughter. And I grieved those years and the career.

But chatting with Joe Grimm and others formerly — and currently — in the newspaper business buoyed my morale and helped give me a new perspective. Many of us are in the same place, wondering how to parlay years, decades, dozens of years of newspaper experience… into something else. And my colleagues still in newspapers are riding the newspaper wave as far and as long as they can, but working harder, under strained conditions, and wondering when the gig will end.

Joe glanced my resume, my client list, and my work history and said: You’re doing fine. You have autonomy over your life and your schedule. You’re doing what you need to do. Whatever you do, you’ll be fine. It was simple and straightforward. I’m still wondering what I will do next, but Joe’s simple words of encouragement were reassuring. I didn’t get closer to answering some questions — Grad school, law school, business school, no school? for example. But, he helped me come back to a notion that I know intuitively to be true. Do your best every day to do the right thing and come to the right decisions, and everything will be fine.

Later in the day, I attended a workshop that seemed tailor-fit to my circumstance: What’s Next for Journalists After the Newsroom. There were many of us sitting in this workshop, listening to former Time Magazine Hong Kong bureau writer, Ling Woo Liu, as she described her transition to nonprofit director, and then go on to cite some grim statistics. So far this year, 2,005  journalists lost jobs. We seem on track to matching last year’s losses of 3,000 jobs. But, this is significantly better than 2009, when 15,000 people lost their positions, and 2008, when 16,000 journalists were left scrambling for a Plan B.

And while the prospect of losing not just a job, but your career and self-identity, can be a frightening one, Liu and the other panelists — a freelancer, a public relations director, and broadcast communications manager — reassured everybody in the room that life post-journalism can be good and rewarding. Strangely, being in a room with several  transitioning journalists at a journalism conference was comforting.

My take-away from the day’s discussions is this: Make the best decisions about your life, your future, your career, and your family at the moment and don’t look back. Just keep going forward.

— Analisa Nazareno