I know the pressure these debts can put on you. I know how angry it makes you, at yourself, at other people, at the world. Why didn’t I save more? Why did I buy that thing? Why did I have to pick up that tab when I didn’t have any goddamn money? How could I support a family like this? Why won’t the world recognize my talent is worth more!?
And so when Nate Thayer published emails with our newest editor (second week on the job), I can see how that might happen. How you might finish writing your last email, “No offense taken,” and then staring at your blog’s CMS that night, decide, you know, what? I’m tired of writing for peanuts, because fuck that. And if a young journalist in her first week on the job was part of the collateral damage, hey, the world just isn’t fair, kid. Pay it forward.
I get it, but it was still a nasty thing to do.
Alexis Madrigal in A Day in the Life of a Digital Editor, 2013 (via theatlantic)
I tried not to read this, but I couldn’t stay away. Now I am hyperventilating because today is only Day 2 of my “funemployment” and I am about to dive back into the cold waters of job searching in journalism. AND I’M TERRIFIED. I wake up tossing and turning and thinking “Why am I so stupid? Why have I allowed myself to love something that will never love me back? What does the future look like? Why have I picked something that will never allow me to have an ‘easy’ life?” I don’t know. I just can’t imagine myself doing anything else. I tried to do something different, something I thought would be easier and fun (advertising). But it wasn’t. And I ended up being booted out because of budget cuts anyway, so it’s all the same. Like the author of this column, I don’t have a good answer for any of this. No one does.
