Greetings!
Today is brought to you by the letters M, I, G, R, A, I, N, and E.
With that in mind, bear with me as I try to pull together a coherent thought. Kind of tough when it feels like someone is drilling a hole into the back of my eyeball.
I hope you had a nice week since my missive last arrived in your (e)mailbox. Last week was a busy one for me. My son started 8th grade (omg) and had his annual physical, where we learned he grew a thousand inches. (Fine. Maybe not that much, but he keeps getting taller by the second and it’s only a matter of months before he’s looking down at me, which is really bizarre.)
On Thursday, Next Avenue published my interview with husband-and-wife rockers Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo. It was an interesting one. Both wanted to be part of the interview, but they couldn't meet at the same time. So I did Pat’s interview first. Zoom was acting weird—she couldn’t see me at all, and I could only see a frozen image of her. We spent the first three minutes logging on and off and saying, “Are you there? Can you see me now?” We finally gave up and just did the interview with me looking at her frozen image and her looking at a blank screen. Neil’s interview was about an hour later. It was mostly smooth, once he got the cameras working. And then I transcribed the two interviews and spliced them together into one Q&A. I think it turned out pretty good, all things considered.
Over the weekend, the kiddo went on an overnight thing with a friend, so my husband and I went to Lenox, Massachusetts to explore art, eat yummy food, and take in some theater.
Beyond that, I’ve been doing the usual—interviewing, organizing my office, chipping away at the many emails…
All kidding aside, can I just vent for a second? I’ve joked about my work email being a tad overwhelmed. “Dumpster Fire” would be an apt description. “Hell of a Hot Mess”? Also good.
The reality is, this DIY thing is hard. The “Y” in DIY is no joke. I call myself a freelance entertainment journalist, but I’m actually a one-woman researcher, interviewer, transcriber, proofreader, editor, social media marketer, IT manager, finance officer, office administrator, and graphic designer. Depending on the person I’m interviewing and how the interview goes, you could probably also toss therapist into the mix.
At any given moment I might be requesting an interview, preparing for an interview, conducting an interview, transcribing an interview, writing up an interview, proofreading an interview, editing an interview, or promoting an interview. Or I could be updating my many Airtable or Excel documents that help me stay on top of my work. Or I might be PDF’ing published articles because you never know when an outlet might erase all of your past work (lookin’ at you, Shondaland). Or I might be researching possible story ideas or pitching ideas to editors or reading a book for an upcoming interview or brainstorming ways to keep my Creative Reverberations baby afloat or maybe having a panic attack because freelancing is terrifying and every job always feels like the last job.
There is always, always, always work to be done. And inevitably, things are going to fall through the cracks. In my case, administrative work is the thing that gets pushed aside. I get to it eventually, but if I had the money, a virtual assistant would absolutely be the thing I’d invest in. Since I don’t (have the money) and I can’t (hire the person), I do it all myself, but only after all other items on my mile-long to-do list are done.
Hence the email fiasco. Nothing important ever falls through the cracks, but I always manage to have somewhere in the realm of 750-1,000 unread emails sitting in my work account. Many of them are newsletters that I swear I’ll read “someday,” and some are emails I’ve sent to myself.
But then there are the infuriating ones. The “I Can’t Fucking Believe You’re Taking Up Space in My Email For This” garbage. Spammy, AI-written junk. Newsletters I didn’t sign up for. Emails to let me know I’ve been unsubscribed from that newsletter I didn’t sign up for.
And then there are the nagging ones. The ones that won’t let me unsubscribe and continue to infiltrate my email like a mold infestation after a storm.
Case in point: There’s a publicist I don’t know and never worked with who emails me at least five times a week, often multiple times a day, with a different press release. All of his clients are authors, though most seem to work in the health space, which isn’t really my jam. Not only that, but the frequency of his emails—coming in so fast that I barely have time to read one before another comes through—is a huge turn-off. Even if I was excited about his clients, I wouldn’t work with him.
They started coming in a few months ago. After about a week of the constant barrage of press releases, I clicked the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of his email. The emails kept coming. I emailed him and asked him to please unsubscribe me. The emails kept coming. I emailed him and the other staff member listed on his website and told them to take me off their PR list. Guess what? They didn’t. The emails kept coming.
I finally created a rule in Gmail that sends everything from him straight to my Trash folder. But, like the aforementioned mold, it’s still there, silently taking over.
Here’s the thing: I get that we’re living in a hustle culture, and everyone has their own podcast/newsletter/whatever that they have to promote. This Corey Newman guy is probably no different. He’s just trying to make a buck like the rest of us. But if we’re all doing the DIY thing, shouldn’t we all recognize how hard the “Y” is? Shouldn’t we keep that in mind when asking for someone’s time? Shouldn’t we respect their wishes and remove them from our promotional materials when asked? I think we should.
Apparently, this Corey Newman person never got the memo.
Anyway, rant over. As a thank you for listening, here are a few things I recommend checking out that have nothing to do with my work:
Shannon Watts is about to launch her Firestarter University, a monthly Zoom class that accompanies her new (wonderful) book, Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age. I don’t know if you can still sign up for the university—it was free to sign up as long as you had purchased her book, but it may be full. But even if you can’t join, I highly recommend reading the book, especially if you’re a woman who feels a little stuck in life.
I’ve only recently discovered the band Whitehall. And I love love love their song “Denim Blue.”
Megan Falley’s writing about her late wife, poet Andrea Gibson, is breathtaking. (Warning: Have tissues handy when you read her work.)
Beyond that, I hope you had a chance to read my chat with graphic designer Karmann Sloane (aka Sketchy Goat) about her work with Heart, The Smashing Pumpkins, and many other artists.
Later this week I’ll share my recent interview with the incredible (and surprisingly hilarious) Dar Williams.
Wishing you a creative, art-filled, email-lite week!