Learning How to Dance in the Rain...Or At Least Not Drown
A Monday afternoon hello.
Greetings and salutations! Man, it’s been a rough few weeks. I returned from vacation to bad news upon bad news.
To start with, it is B-L-E-A-K times for creatives. First came the Squarespace notification that website fees would increase by as much as 26% for an annual subscription. (And as a Squarespace customer, I can say firsthand that it’s very difficult to jump ship and move a website to a new provider. Squarespace knows this, which is why they’re a-ok with upping the fees.)
Then there was the news that Substack would be incorporating an AI checker into its software so readers can verify that every post they read was written by a human, despite the fact that AI checkers are notoriously prone to false positives. Not to mention that AI was trained on human writing to begin with, so to use AI as a way to flag AI and blame the human for using AI when the AI stole from the human is like a bizarro sci-fi b-movie.
On top of that, Canva and Pinterest and Etsy and so many other sites once relied upon by creatives have disintegrated into AI slop.
And if you’re a freelance writer who wants to throw in the towel and maybe get a full-time job, just know that pay has decreased so much that ELLE Magazine is hiring a temporary full-time magazine culture editor for their NYC office with the whopping salary of $35 an hour.
Sigh.
I’m so tired. I’m sure you are, too. The world is…a lot. And it feels like every week there are more and more obstacles in our way.
In addition to all that, over the past few weeks my husband and I have learned that three friends we knew from our time in L.A. have passed away, all relatively young. One of them, Ami, worked as an arts advocate and fundraiser for nonprofit museums in California. Our husbands were once colleagues and after I moved to upstate New York, she and I had occasional phone calls to commiserate over our jobs (since I was still working in the nonprofit arts space) and discuss our sons, who were the same age. She died last month from brain cancer at the age of 49, and her obituary was a beautiful reminder of her passion for the arts. It said, in part:
Such a beautiful tribute to her work and her memory.
Okay, all that was a lot to dump on you. I’m sorry. Let’s take a break and listen to something upbeat, shall we? Here’s a palate cleanser.
That helped a little.
As I mentioned, I’m back from vacation. It was heavenly, although it went by way too quickly (as all good vacations do). We spent a few days at Walt Disney World, then took a 7-day Disney cruise, and wrapped it up by visiting my husband’s family in Florida. It was insanely hot and ridiculously humid, but we had so much fun.
I hope you had a chance to read last week’s chat with author Catherine Adel West. Her new book, Strangers Behind Closed Doors, is a great read! (This content contains affiliate links. I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.)
Later this week I’ll share my recent chat with filmmaker Jared Isaac. We talked about his gorgeous new indie film, An Autumn Summer, which you can rent on Fandango, Amazon, and Apple TV.
That’s it for now. I hope you’re doing as well as can be. Thank you for reading this far! Until next time!
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Sorry for the loss of your friends. And thank you for sharing that lovely instruction from Ami’s obituary.
I'm so sorry for your loss - it's hard to lose a good friend! Pink's song and dance made me smile - an uplifting tribute and good reminder. Peace!