One of the journalist's more peculiar quirks is that they tend to live their lives from anywhere between 15 minutes to a day in the future.
Tomorrow's news is never old and any amount of time journos spend in the company of other journos invariably takes on an uncanny conversational tense where tomorrow is talked about in terms of today, now is a fleeting moment that effectively happened about an hour ago, and yesterday is relegated to the history books.
After eight years of leading into his broadcasts with a line like "coming up, after the break," NBN sports presenter Mitchell Hughes' mind is still always on the future. At 11am at a Honeysuckle coffee shop just down the road from the station's new studios in the former Newcastle Herald offices, Hughes is looking toward an interview lined up with a Dudley paddle racer bound for Hawaii, and a handful of other yarns of local athletes putting Newcastle and the Hunter on the map round the world.
In the past five years, while it might have felt like our world was getting smaller and more localised, stuck inside for the COVID stretch, the local sport bulletin was getting bigger. Interviews conducted over Zoom - a necessity in the pandemic - has now opened the borders for the local journo's beat to stretch around the globe.
"Five years ago, there were no Zooms on television," Hughes says at one point in a wide-ranging interview with Topics in late July, "Now, we can do a story about a Hunter athlete who is anywhere on the planet on any given day."
That same athlete bound for Hawaii; "They live stream it," Hughes says, "Even five years ago, we would have been waiting until he got home, we would have had a photo of him with a paddle, and some shots of him at Redhead Beach to substitute for that vision. Now, the stories have become so rich and full with the actual content of the event.
"Before it felt like we could only cover what was happening an hour away from where we lived. Now, we can tell a story about how your local athlete is doing on the other side of the planet."
The veteran sportcaster has spent more than two decades working in the local news, and picked up his first job as a reel-to-reel tape editor in 1999 before turning his hand to reporting in 2004. He has worked in the channel's bureaus at Lismore and the Gold Coast, but came home to Newcastle in 2006 where he ultimately become the station's sport presenter in 2015 when former presenter Mike Rabbitt retired.
Now, after the birth of his two sons - twins Harvey and Harrison - in March 2020, on the same fateful day COVID-imposed restrictions were first felt in the Hunter, Hughes has found himself taking stock and looking to the next chapter of his life.
He signed off for the last time on air on Thursday, August 3, after a decades-spanning career in local media. He has resigned to spend more time with his wife Laura, and young family, and will take work with the City of Newcastle as the news station moves to appoint a new main sport presenter.
"I'm just a kid from Kotara," Hughes says, "I never thought - it wouldn't have even been a fathomable thing to think that I would one day sit in Mike Rabbitt's chair and read the sport for NBN News.
"But I think it just really was hitting home about a year ago ... I remember being at childcare one morning at about 8.30am and Laura turned to me and the boys and said, 'Alright boys, say goodbye to Daddy and you'll see him tomorrow' and I realised I don't see my kids. It's 8.15am and I've got 22 hours until I might see them again and that's four days a week."
After Hughes' father passed away at 71, he he found himself re-evaluating what was most important; time.
"I know that there are no second chances," he says, "One of the camera operators at work, when my dad passed away, said something that has stuck in my brain - that the most valuable thing dad ever gave us was time. He didn't buy a car when I turned 18 or a skateboard when I turned 12; we don't remember possessions. You don't remember any of that, except that he coached your team when you were seven years old and he came to watch you in the school play."
"My dad had kids at 28. He would have felt like a dad, hardcore, at 30. I'm now feeling like a dad, hardcore, at 43. Just having time with the boys is really important."
Hughes steps away from the local news beat in the wake of change on a level unprecedented, even for an industry that makes its hay on unprecedented change, but as he reflects on his career it's the stories that he turns to most often.
"Telling these stories has been my favourite part," he says, "When I was in high school, I really liked Inside Sport magazine where if there was an interview with Kieren Perkins, it was three pages long and it wasn't this fast clickbait; it was about what made them tick.
"I think that is what has driven my style as a reporter. I don't naturally gravitate toward scandal, I gravitate toward the personal.
"Now matter who they choose to replace me, I would have that Ive given everyone in the newsroom that sense that everybody can get a run on the news. ... These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary things and they live just around the corner."
