After over 25 years as a news anchor on TV4, Anna Lindmarker has decided to stop. That after she was asked if she was interested in taking a severance package.
– I actually didn’t think so, but it’s a reorganisation, we’re saving and there will be redundancy in the program management group. Then I got this question and at first I thought “no, but why then? Never in my life”. Because I love journalism, I love my job, says Anna.
In other words, choosing to quit was not an easy decision. It was a process that landed in something other than what she first thought.
– I changed my mind and thought “but what the hell, I’m quite tired”. I’ve had a rough few years. This is an opportunity to work on other things. So now it feels… very sad to leave the editorial environment, but I still have my friends.
“I’ve worked pretty much all my life”
The feelings have been mixed. She has been angry and sad, but also happy and relieved.
– I have worked pretty much my whole life. Although many people think that the job of presenter is very cool, that we slip in there just before broadcast and have everything served, it is not so, she says.
She explains what the work actually looks like.
– My job starts when I get up in the morning and read several newspapers, listen to the news and take in all the information. Talks with the editors about guests and how we should post the broadcasts, then it continues like that all day. It takes a lot of strength, not least because this autumn has been horribly difficult considering what is happening between Hamas and Israel. There have been stories that have been terrible to hear, says Anna.
– All the terrible events that I have reported on, they are still in the body. In a way, it will be quite nice not to have to absorb everything, process it and think about how we can make a broadcast of it, she continues.
Anna Lindmarker will do that now
And what the future has to offer remains to be seen – but there are plans.
– I will have Sunday dinners with my children until they get tired of me. I will spend time with my dogs. Maybe I’ll become a YouTuber, she laughs.
– We’ll see how it goes, we have a project.
Together with the seven women in her book club, whom she has met once a month for several years, the plan is to start a podcast.
– They have been indispensable to me. There are three actors, a lawyer, a healer and an artist. We have so much fun together and we’re going to start a podcast, she says.
But what it will be about, she chooses to hold on to.
– I probably can’t say much more.
The first thing Anna has to do when she quits at the turn of the year is to rest, take naps and focus on herself – something she otherwise rarely does.
– I’m going to feel for a bit and think about it, it’s a golden opportunity to do that. But then our podcast starts! And then I think I will work a lot more with it than I currently think I will, she says.