While I haven’t nailed that aspect of the job yet, I do know that there are ways to manage your days, especially the bad ones. Do find comfort in little breaks. There will always be deadlines and you’ll meet them, but make sure there’s enough time to breathe before you throw yourself into the next thing. Dealing with heavy stories that need to be written quickly day in, day out without mental reprieve is an easy way to get burned out.

Even if it’s just 10 minutes away from your desk, take the time to pop the reporting bubble, if you can. After all, you’re no good to the next story if you’re still mentally tangled in the last one.

Sometimes you can unplug for a few minutes between things like phone interviews. For me, going to the kitchen and making a cup of tea is a welcome break even if it takes a few minutes, simply because it gets me out of the firing-on-all-cylinders mindset. For you, it might be a walk around the block and a bit of people-watching. Fresh air works wonders.

Everyone forms their own soothing rituals. There’s a supermarket across the road from my office and on my lunch breaks, I retreat into the mug-ware section and try to find the strangest one. It’s difficult to feel constricting pressure when I’ve found a coffee cup shaped like an alpaca.

But what can you do when you’re stuck in the bubble? Try to curate the stories you’re tackling. Breaking news can’t be helped, because that stuff has to go out as soon as possible, but rolling stories can be tweaked on rough days.

If you’re researching, balance out the heavier stuff with “fluffier” stories when it’s getting too much. Stories about 100th birthdays or treatments for sick children or a hospital ward being granted funding. A family’s long-lost cat finally being found or a community initiative proudly showing off a new vegetable patch. Again, it’s not Pulitzer-winning stuff, but it makes a potent balm for the brain.

The main thing to remember, when it all gets too much, is that there has to be some good in this world to balance out the onslaught of the depressing.

It’s also a good place to start when global headlines are taking their toll. We often feel disconnected and helpless, especially if we work hyperlocally. But injustices on a huge scale are often first detected on a microscopic level, so it helps to be vigilant. Even if nothing ever comes up, no discrepancies in MPs’ expenses or houses built on sought-after green spaces by shifty businesses, the feeling of purpose is enough to get you through. And you never know, one day you might stumble across something big.

The main thing to remember, when it all gets too much, is that there has to be some good in this world to balance out the onslaught of the depressing. Although it can feel like the darkness encroaches on every possible aspect of reporting, it’s up to us as journalists to go out and find the light that often goes under the radar.

In short: Be unrepentant in your search for hope and joy, because those are the stories you’ll cling to when you need them most and the weird ones you’ll look back on with fondness.

Work hard to put on a game face when slogging through the traumatic stuff. It’ll protect you from taking on too much of the story, but be sure to take it off at the end of the day and put it to bed. Don’t let the job make you hard.

And finally, be vigilant. There are bad days, good days, and dull days. But no two days will ever be the same when you’re reporting. It does mean girding your loins a little, but if you fall in love with the sheer variety the role brings, you’ll never want to do anything else.

And if you tell the world about the greatness, both big and small, on your patch, hopefully everything else will fall into step. It’s like the law of attraction. Put out what you want to receive — and the good news will come flooding in.

At least, that’s the theory.