My dad worked his last corporate “work day” recently. By some arbitrary capitalist benchmark, he retired—though I don’t expect he’ll be adopting that concept any time soon.
In my eyes at least, my dad has always been ahead of the curve, the economy, the cultural moment—and I fully expect he will continue to do so from here, at least in his own way. This is, after all, a man who started out driving bands around in vans in the midlands of England and ended up working for his childhood idol. (He was also once named in a New Yorker profile of said idol; I’m still not over it.) He watched Napster and then iTunes and then Spotify cannibalize the industry he had worked in for decades and, instead of finding a new profession like many of his peers, he embraced a new challenge. I even distinctly remember watching him craft a ‘personal brand’ when most millennials were still in middle school.
Indeed, a lot of what I know about hard work, creativity, and (self) employment I learned from him (and a healthy dose from my mom too, who is a creative force in her own right). The privilege of having two parents who not only understand the slightly off-kilter mindset it takes to pursue a creative life, but have also actively encouraged me to go for it myself is something I think about a lot. It’s safe to say I wouldn’t have the career I do without them.
In honor of this particular transition, it feels only fair to pass on some of my dad’s nuggets of wisdom. Here is what he has taught me about Doing The Work.
Newsflash: No one is going to give you permission! If you want to do something, create something, start something, you have to pick yourself. It’s hard and uncomfortable and feels totally absurd at first. But it’s literally the only way forward. (credit also goes to Seth Godin for this one, as well as for the image above.)
Relatedly, as a creative person, it doesn’t matter who your client, your employer, or the company you work for is—first and foremost, you work for yourself. You forget that at your own peril.
Underpromise; overdeliver.
When you need to get paid, don’t ask your client or editor where the payment is—ask who the accounts person is. They are your new best friend.
It doesn’t matter if you work at a deli or as a personal assistant or an executive at a record label: Make yourself indispensable. It has a way of speaking for itself.
Don’t just get in touch with people when you need something from them. Part of your job as a creative person is to sincerely care about other people’s hustles—and help them wherever and whenever you can!—so that in turn, they will care about yours. This isn’t strategic self interest, it’s generosity.
ABFU: Always be following up. It’s not magic: the more religious you are about doing it (politely, of course), the more it works.
And to quote my dad’s farewell email to his company: “It all starts with the music ... and it still does, no matter the medium.” In other words, there is no shortcut. If your number one priority is not making good art, your efforts to sell that art will probably fall flat. It’s as simple (and as hard) as that.
Things I wrote:
Last year I started following a baby chimpanzee named Limbani on Instagram. I loved him. But then I realized that a baby chimpanzee probably shouldn’t be on Instagram at all. So I did a lot of reporting and wrote about the surprising (and sad) reality of following exotic animals on Instagram. I’m glad this piece finally got to see the light of day, because it took a while.
Have you noticed how everyone is trying so damn hard these days? I wrote a pretty wild think-piece about whether we are due for a cultural reemergence of the slacker once influencer culture reaches its logical conclusion. I love an opportunity to blame things on neoliberalism, which I do profligately in this piece. (h/t to my unparalleled editor Indrani for making this piece make sense).
I’m still on the Bad Cruise News beat. A frightening bottom line: There are a whole litany of reasons a lifeboat is not as much of a failsafe as cruisers would like to think it is.
I’ve also been writing for Quartz’s premium edition (which is paywalled; you can get a free trial here). Stories have included why the conscious consumerism movement has largely ignored air travel, how to fly with two passports correctly, and truly practical advice for getting an airline upgrade.
Things I read:
Behold, corporate yoga teacher training which resembles a multi-level marketing scheme. [NY Times]
Supermarkets in Britain are truly a delight in my opinion (at least compared to America). I enjoyed this deep dive into the effect that Aldi has had on the way Brits shop. [Guardian Longread]
On how it feels to eviscerate Facebook at the TED Conference, where Facebook is a sponsor. [Guardian]
This is extremely stressful to read if you are a reporter that has ever dealt with lawyers vetting your work pre-publication (hi). However, it provides great insight into the ways that legal threats from rich and powerful people can sometimes prevent good journalism from seeing the light of day in ways I don’t think the public realizes. [NY Mag]
Coincidentally, before Julian Assange got arrested this month, I re-read this totally bonkers profile of him, written by his ghostwriter before he went under house arrest. It’s a wild, long ride and it’s totally worth your time. [LRB]
On the Miami real estate market’s bonkers attitude to climate change, summed up as: “I am afraid of dying, sure, but so far, it hasn’t been an issue.” [Popula]
I keep visualizing this sentence from this beautiful piece about what happens as a whale carcass decays on the bottom of the ocean floor: “Fluffy pink anemones swayed at their peaks, presaging the whale’s future as a reef.” [The New Yorker]
Things I listened to:
I am just about the last person to enjoy a podcast produced by a large social network but … LinkedIn’s Hello Monday series is really great! (Predictably, I especially loved Elizabeth Gilbert’s episode). [LinkedIn]
KPCC’s “The Big One” is terrifying and great and has got me thinking about low-key doomsday prepping (though it was more for the purposes of a no-deal Brexit, rather than a huge earthquake on the San Andreas fault.) [KPCC]
Last Days of August. I’ve been on a bit of a Jon Ronson binge recently. This is storytelling that feels both engrossing but also ethically responsible, unlike so much true crime podcasting genre these days. [Last Days of August]
Lifestyle tip:
It’s very much spring! Celebrate by putting grapefruit and pistachios and mint in your salad! (Also, god bless Growing Communities’ seasonal recipes, which are a source of great kitchen creativity for me.)
Word soup:
“There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.” —Jon Ronson
“There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story. Change the world.” —Terry Pratchett
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