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What this "traditional media" expat has to say about the way the wind has blown

I am an ex-pat of traditional media. I came to my first job hoping that I would see my name in magazine bylines and book covers. Maybe I would get to share my work on TV, God willing. I left "print" by accident, not by any prescience on my part of its eventual declining significance, but more from an inability to fit in.

I'm sure if I had stuck it out a bit more and not taken a new media job five years in I might have made more of a go of it. But things discouraged me about traditional media. It had an established power structure that made it nearly impossible to get noticed. I wrote things I was proud of on the side, while editing more established writers in the waking hours and writing uninspired copy as a freelancer. But I hadn't really established a voice that was worthy of cashing in favors from editor friends of mine.

I didn't crackle with potential; I tended to get sleepy at work while copyediting and often had my edits edited. My favorite part of my job was reading magazines--a nice perk of working at a print media company--and going to parties, where a lot of people asked me for my card. Being employed by a large media company, I didn't have to go after editors looking for print work. But I had no ability to get published within my own company. When I was told I couldn't write good headlines it felt more like a sentence than a criticism. It was an indication of my inability to do well in this world. I wouldn't get to do what I really wanted--to write--because clearly it wasn't in my blood.

I read with fascination Lesley M.M. Blume's piece in Slate, "The Media's Lost Generation" about the travails of traditional media refugees who are being forced to have to re-invent themselves in mid-career. Her piece opens,

Last month, a media executive met with a headhunter to plan his next career move. With years of experience at a major media organization, the executive figured that he had some good ammo to jump to the next level, even in the current economic climate.

The meeting did not go well.

"The headhunter essentially told me not to even bother trying," says the executive. "He told me, ‘The old media model is broken.' The message was that there really isn't a next step to take."

I read articles about the challenges of print and television all the time, but this one really resonated with me, perhaps, because I'm relieved that through no particular flash of insight other than just a feeling to go where I can make a difference, I veered to where the action is. A direction now deemed "correct" in the world. I recall my decison to leave New York to take a new media job, ten years ago, and asking a trusted mentor whether it made sense for me to leave and relinquish my somewhat low, but higher than rock-bottom, place on the media ladder.

"You'll be back in six months. Don't lose any numbers," he said. My decision to go was one of the first logically inexplicable ones I'd made. It came from the gut and a voice that said, "Do it anyway."

I share this because I am not taking a self-righteous stance on the new relevance of new media, or social media. I make a living from it, I believe my company rides along the edge of best practices everyday, but I can't say that I knew this would happen; I'd only hoped I would be able to pursue this growing interest in a model counter intuitive to the people I used to work for. A model that democratized media, to a large extent, and made possible a notion terrifying to most people like me who hinged their self-worth on "making it" in traditional media: that there's a whole helluva lot of talent out there and it ain't all on the Hearst, Conde Nast, or Time Warner payrolls. Traditional media just took in whom they could fit, who matched the pedigree, or who had an uncle who could introduce you to the editor, or who had this random bit of luck and was seen for what she could produce, and sometimes bonafide talent. But so may others could not even make it to the filter, let alone make a living at it.

Back in my print days, there was something so alluring about being one of a few selected, whose name would be committed to print. And there's a whole community of folks, I'm sure, who still hold print sacred. I'm one of them, even as someone whose name has only made it via her work in new media. I fretted so long about being a part of it that even while it's suffering I promise to someday return -- if it will have me. Many bloggers who are doing just fine building platforms online still look at the book deal as the summit of success. I'll know I'm fully evolved when I couldn't care less about hardcover, softcover, or any cover.

Blume writes of executives who have dedicated their careers to traditional media and who now have no idea what's next. I recall from back in my editing days that the most likely way to "move up" in traditional media was to jump to a new company. I had friends whose resumes made me dizzy--they moved, often laterally, to a company, then another, sometimes even back to their original company. Anything to extricate them from a previously untenable working situation (untenable, meaning with blocked or unclear paths to promotion). Often their situation wasn't any better when they moved, but even the possibility of shaking lose a few additional thousand per year, or removing the word "associate" from their title was worth it. Movement in itself meant relevance.

But now, after swinging from tall building to tall building like Spiderman, these execs are finding themselves in freefall: The buildings have crashed down.

It's been difficult to share my thoughts on the overarching change that's going on, because it would be so easy to accuse me of advocating for the side on which my bread is buttered. But could any of us really read Blume's piece and think that we've ended up on the "right" or "wrong" side? I read it, felt lucky for a second, and then realized, no matter which side we're on, we can't stop moving. We must simply learn to love the freefall, even when at times someone throws us a net.

What I'm grateful for is not having ended up where I am, but for the voice that had told me, when I thought I should stay in the realm of the known, "Do it anyway."

The Accidental Entrepreneur

I never planned on being an entrepreneur. Independent contractor, yes. Freelancer? Uh huh. But an entrepreneur? I never thought I had it in me.

I don't consider myself a risk taker so much as a demander of work I feel passionate about. I'm ambitious, but you don't have to be a risk-taker to be ambitious. You can get all A's in school, graduate from college early with honors, get a graduate degree and thereby hedge your bets that you will be "successful" in the more superficial sense of the word--money and job opportunities. I've always been a hard worker, but that, too, doesn't mean risk-taker. Just why, then, am I an entrepreneur?

It was an accident. I found myself in a situation where the mission, the people, and the timing were right. We didn't think that the market was ripe for us, we just wanted to do what we did. We didn't think about positioning ourselves at that time. We just created what we thought was missing. We had the time and the energy. Considering all of these factors that just fell into place I'm amazed that I became an entrepreneur. The opportunities where pure passion meet a market where it can be leveraged is SO rare.

I'm reading a book, the Entrepreneurial Imperative. I've just started, so no major takes on it yet. But I am struck by the author's premise, which is we will only help ourselves through entrepreneurism. It's the only way, not only in business but in philosophy. We must be willing to take our futures into our own hands.

This can be interpreted in many ways: we can become entrepreneurial by bringing our passions to the workplace, or creating our own workplace if we can't bring them to our current ones. We must allow intrapreneurism (Nina Simosko writes an interesting piece about the origins and true meaning of this word) in our companies.
 
Applying this imperative to the current world situation, we need to allow each other to think our way out of what isn't working. Waiting for cycles of change isn't effective. What will happen if we all take our career lives into our own hands? Make our jobs. Think of our best way to serve.

Perhaps, then, being entrepreneurial would not seem so risky.

Fear

I live in a teensy weensy house. H-band says I exaggerate its teensy-weesiness. Our friends say it's really cozy. I like how, when the sun begins to set, it lights the living room in burnt yellow.

We moved in over Memorial Day weekend in 2004. It seemed like a nice "in-between" place for us, a place where we could test our growing relationship, when H-band was B-friend, and midway into a grad school program. I was working in the city and picked up the bus every day just a few yards from our front door. It was one of the best commutes I'd ever had.

The house had a very affordable rent, almost too affordable. We later learned that the owner was trying to sell the place and kept the rent low to keep people there. For me, that meant saving almost $1,000 a month, compared to what I was paying in the city. That $1,000 became more meaningful when I quit my job to freelance and explore the blogging world. I didn't have gigs lined up, just a book proposal and a desire to learn what was next without knowing what it would look like. The house gave me the luxury of living in uncertainty.

When I quit my other work to make BlogHer a full-time business, our little, rented house made an irregular paycheck possible. We were able to take risks because we weren't tied down to a mortgage. We had a scare when the landlord sold the house, but the new owners let us stay without raising our rent. I was relieved and annoyed at the same time. In my mind I'd set a two-year clock and thought we'd move out when then-B-friend had finished grad school. He was now starting a job, and I was now working from home. The house seemed to be getting smaller.

I noticed things. The unrenovated kitchen didn't have enough counterspace. B-friend and I had to make room by placing a cutting board across the sink. There was no dishwasher, which made for some arguments over opposed philosophies on how long dirty dishes should sit. In the colder months, ants invaded. Some of the braver ones would run across my computer screen or up my pants leg, making me smack myself continually, paranoid that more were close. In the long summer, mosquitoes somehow made it past the cracks between the adjustable screens and the uneven window frames and tortured us in the middle of the night. By the time I came to and heard the buzzing in my ear, our visitors usually had feasted two or three times. Despite the summer heat I'd mummify myself in sheets to prevent more bites and wake up wet with sweat.

"I can't keep doing this," I said, every summer.

"Don't worry, Babe." B-friend said. "We won't be here much longer."

To stay sane I'd walk one block to the local main street on hot summer nights and get ice cream or gelato.

"You won't be so close when we move up into the hills," B-friend said to me, looking eastward, where we took most of our walks, both because the hills provided some challenge and because our thoughts of the future gravitated upward, where the real estate became grander, and more elusive.

Our dining room was too small for our scratched, second-hand dining set to be placed in the middle of it. We'd pushed the table against the wall and set only two chairs at one of the corners. That was all the space B-friend and I needed. That was all the space B-friend needed to propose.

After we married, we fantasized about moving out, getting more closet space, and real furniture to dignify the plates and flatware we'd received by the boxful. We didn't feel right about unpacking it all, thinking that it was just a matter of months before we'd have to pack it all back in again. Every week we looked at patterns, browsed Pottery Barn catalogues for dining sets, found things for "the house," not the one we were currently living in.

We'd heard the economy may become unstable, so we kept our plan, but stopped looking at houses--it was just too painful to look inside a home and not be able to make an offer. We looked only enough to know where we'd look, when the time was right. We figured it would just be another few months.

My company received a round of funding, and we hired staff and moved into an office space on the Peninsula. Though I had been "unofficially" making the drive to Redwood City a few times a week, having official headquarters there now made our home's location problematic.

"If we don't buy right away," I said to H-band, "We'll need to figure something out. Get a place in the city, maybe." H-band placated me as much as he could.

"What's the point of renting a place in the city when we will buy a place soon enough?"

To keep me engaged he indulged me in cleaning out the storage room under the house and the garage--things you do to prepare for moving. We bought travel guides to South America and planned a trip for sometime later in the year, to get away. I ended up squelching the plans when a number of business trips to Europe made planning another trip at that time seem frivolous, and when, driving from a cousin's wedding a few weeks ago, we'd heard some news that made all this speculation about the economy feel a bit realer.

A few people were laid off at H-band's company, and then a few more. This raised some hackles, as I--a dot-com refugee--remember how that started, with just a few, then a few more. H-band began to watch more shows on CNN and MSNBC.

"They don't talk about the same things anymore," H-band said. "They talk about changing the way we live."

"We've been saving," I said.

"We could save more."

Finishing up dinner with friends last night, one of them said, "Well that's my night out for the week." It occurred to me that, some time ago, I stopped counting my nights out for dinner. While I couldn't buy a house, I had become quite accustomed of buying anything else I needed, when I needed it.

Driving home from dinner, H-band said, "We need to think of ways to cut back, before we have to."

"But we have been cutting back. For years we've been cutting back." Or more accurately, not running up credit.

"But all those people who haven't now will, and that's going to make it tough for everybody."

I thought of my few consumer obsessions--wine, spa treatments, travel, and clothes.

"I never noticed that TJ Maxx," I said as we passed it on I-80 through the City. "Is that one new?"

This morning I went to yoga class--the first time in three years. I felt stiff and tight, despite being one of the youngest people in the room. The past few years my body has contracted, possibly from being hunched over computers, or crammed in Economy Plus. I got home and expected H-band to be ready to leave on one of his Epic bike rides. The house smelled of fresh toast and fruit. He was still in his pajamas, watching political shows.

"Aren't you taking off soon?" I asked him.

"I just wanted to relax a bit more," he said. "I like relaxing here."

We watched together. More of the speeches we've seen over the past month.

"No one says it's going to get better soon," he said. I had heard much of the same. He stretched out on our massive two-year old couch. We bought it when we got married, anticipating a much bigger space for it shortly. It was so big we had to move the coffee table out of the way to accommodate the long ottoman it came with. The room seemed to be more a receptacle for furniture than our living space.

"I gotta say, Babe. Despite all the planning, all the looking, I'm happy here."

I had one foot out of the house, and now I've put that foot back in. 

Thanks Wayne!: My interview on Blog Talk Radio

Wayne, you ask really good questions. As for me, two words: Chatty Cathy. To listen to our hour-long chat about the challenges of soloing. Check out Wayne Hurlbert's radio program on Blog Talk Radio. We talk about Living without a Net, Entrepreneurial Sins, and BlogHer. It was a pleasure!

The Small Business Owner's Guide to Life: Rule #1--Stop Trying to Land Mr. Hard-to-Get

I used to read Inc. Magazine purely for hypothetical value, in case I ever needed to know how to run a business. I never planned to start my own company; I was interested in the psychology of a small business owner, knowing that I would someday take the leap again and become an independent contractor, not--I repeat--a small business owner. I figured that mundanities like payroll or P&Ls would keep me from my real work, that of creating. I skipped the stories about legal issues, accounting, and project management software for the virtual enterprise and focused on the lifestyle stories--the profiles of people who lived in incertainty and infinite possibility.

Now I'm wishing I'd paid more attention to the other stuff.

Living Without a Net: An Odyssey into Self-Employment: "Good" Procrastination

I was turned on to this essay by Paul Graham on Procrastination and had to mention it on the blog. So many aspects of it remind me of issues in my own work life.

For the record: I do not consider myself a procrastinator--more a reformed procrastinator. Back when I procrastinated, my house was never so clean than when I was on deadlines. If I struggled with a sentence I'd go wash a dish, or dust a corner of the room I'd noticed hadn't been wiped down in ages.

There are some things I know about procrastinators from the many articles I've read on working styles. Procrastinators are perfectionists in disguise. If they can't do something perfectly they don't do it, period, or they do something else. They often sabotage their efforts by looking for easier things to fix.

I think of yesterday, as I was fleshing out a concept and just got first sight in my mind of just how complicated it was, and how difficult--but possible-it would be to convey this complexity in writing. I got up for something to drink and sat back down, wondering, "Where was I?" But, remembering I was a REFORMED procrastinator and got back on track.

Still, my work style isn't perfect. Some to-do's get delayed, some plans get cancelled. And yet I feel like I am on-purpose. Back when I was a confirmed procrastinator that wasn't always the case. I felt like I worked all the time, but never got anything done.

Living Without a Net: An Odyssey into Self-Employment: On the Mystery of Flow

Back during a period of deep introspection I realigned my social life with anything relating to personal development. My bookshelves were lined with books by new age gurus. I hung out with people who questioned everything I said with the phrase, "Really, what's around that?" meaning, What are you really trying to say? Are you really "tired" or are you in a deep psychological chasm of denial? Every conversation felt like an admonition.

I spent chunks of my life in seminars that taught me about myself, including one that taught me the difference between authenticity and sincerity (I write about it in my chapter summary in More Space).

I met a man in one of these seminars--a ghost writer. Being a frustrated, washed-up freelancer, I had to ask him how he could be a ghost writer--he did all of the work but didn't get any credit! He didn't see it that way. He thought his work allowed him glimpses into other people's lives. He could live through their stories with them and retell it. Getting credit was not the reason he wrote, he said. He wrote because he was called to do it, so it really didn't matter that he didn't get a byline. Getting paid to do what he loved was a bonus.

"But how are you able to write so regularly?" I said. "Don't you get writer's block?" I couldn't imagine being continuously motivated to write about other people on deadline. Back when I freelanced for a living, I spent roughly 70 percent of my time pitching articles, 20 percent writing and 10 percent tracking down payment. And the 20 percent of the time I was writing I didn't particularly care for what I was writing. My pitches always morphed into something more commercial than I originally planned, or more watered down for a mass audience, or I'd give up on the uninspired story I pitched and take an editor's assignment instead.

At night, I had time to pursue personal writing--what I thought was my passion--but by then I was too tired to have the energy to get anything worthwhile on paper. I see now that "tired" was actually fearful of facing the truth of what I was or wan't capable of doing. What if I wasn't a very good writer? Then I'd be confronted with a heartbreaking truth. What if I was a good writer? Then I'd be confronted with another heartbreaking truth that, 80 percent of my waking hours were spent on less worthy pursuits. Often, when I took up writing at night I spent hours staring at my screen, or rereading the few sentences I managed to eek out, teetering on the edge of failure or success.

The man's response to my question was rather unexpected.

Living Without a Net: An Odyssey into Self-Employment: Do Less, Have Faith

I have a strange Wednesday ritual of picking up one of the free San Francisco papers, SF Weekly, and starting it from the end, where the 1-900 numbers and consort services place ads. Amidst the lace and silicone is Rob Brezny's Free Will Astrology column, which I've read since happening upon it in the Village Voice years ago. I have no idea if Brezny's advice aligns with real astrological happenings, but I still read the column religiously because he offers such good advice.

This week, my horoscope (Gemini) read, in regards to my life in 2006:

"Many Geminis fit the description of a class of people that Wired Magazine calls 'yeppies,' or 'young, experimenting perfection seekers.' Overwhelmed by a profusion of conflicting opportunities, they are restless and insatiable. They treat life 'as an exercise in comparison shopping, refusing to commit for fear of missing a better offer.' ...

...I urge you to try out some very different attitudes: a tolerance for imperfection, a respect for limits, an appreciation of the value of peace of mind, and a willingness to concentrate on just two or three possibilities instead of 17."

It sounded like great advice. "Agreed," I thought. So then why was I feeling nervous? Perhaps it was because I've suspected that, as 2005 was my year of exploring my options, 2006 will have to be my year of whittling them down. And I'm a bad whittler.

Living Without a Net: An Odyssey into Self-Employment: The Crock Pot Approach to Living

B-friend loves his crock pot. Every time we use this vessel--a standby of graduate students and people with no time to slave over a stove--he makes it a grand event. Several times a month he makes a list of ingredients that will go into his latest concoction. He always prepares the morning before--slicing and dicing vegetables, throwing in spices--some of them frighteningly random, and tossing in some sort of meat before setting the timer on slow cook.

I look in on all that raw stuff sitting there, unconsolidated, in the pot and think to myself, how could this possibly turn out? And yet, every time, as the house becomes fragrant with something that could pass for a special at Chez Panisse, the dish turns out to be the best--whatever it is--I've ever had.

"Man," I say to b-friend. This stuff is amazing!"

"Of course," he says, without laughing at himself. "It always is. It always will be."

I resent his confidence. How can he be so sure that his recipes will turn out brilliantly every time? I cringe when he dumps in what strikes me as an irresponsible amount of Cayenne pepper, or I suck in air as he dumps in a teaspoon of cinammon--something completely inconsistent with a savory dish--"to give it a nice kick." His ingredients don't always make sense to me. And sometimes, I just want the simple, tried-and-true things--a sweet and sour cabbage soup without cumin, or a beef stew without any curry. Yet I can't recall a meal that turned out poorly using his gut-inspired method.

People like b-friend, I realize, who make sumptuous feasts from seemingly incompatible ingredients, and who never question that they will turn out better than Emeril's, have the stuff of true soloists. No matter what--their projects will always turn out.

Living Without a Net: An Odyssey into Self-Employment: A Soloist's Spiritual Housecleaning

Events of the past few weeks have conspired to make me a bit blue. I can almost use my most recent loss as an excuse for some other areas of my life that aren't working. When I lose focus and apologize profusely, or hear bad news and start to mope, others have said to me, "Well of course you are feeling out of sorts! You lost your father!"

Of course my Dad is in my thoughts, but so are many other things as we near the end of the year and I look back on my life experiment, having left full-time employment in January to explore what made me tick.