What you need in life
You'll be eating right
I was going through security at George Bush Intercontinental Airport after the last engagement of the Friends in Napa tour when I had a thought about money, power, and respect. I’d love to say that The Lox anthem by that name was playing throughout the terminal. It wasn’t, but it evokes a theory by which I’ve abided, consciously or not, throughout my career.
Essentially, you do some jobs for money, you do some for prestige, and you do some out of pure, unadulterated (or maybe adulterated) desire.
Put into more personal terms, in the early aughts, I paid off some Capital One debt incurred by a too-spendy trip to Las Vegas (let he who is without cast the first stone) by writing the website copy for a new resort in Atlantic City. I’m not sure how the resort found me or why they thought I was the woman for the job. I didn’t fully believe that I would get paid until the check materialized in the mail, partly because when I asked if I could visit the soon-to-open resort to better describe its rooms and amenities, they first said yes, and then, the day before I was due to head down, said never mind, no.
The resort has since shuttered and my Starry Night-emblazoned piece of plastic long ago expired, but I will always be grateful for that unforeseen opportunity to dig myself out of credit score hell. Contrary to the notion that “you should never do it for the money,” unless you own land, were born a royal, or have vast cash reserves at your disposal, some jobs, you do for the money. Such is the nature of work.
Prestige: in literary terms, this encompasses your periodicals, not-for-profits, and other publications that have lofty ambitions but meager budgets. They may not be able to pony up your standard word, piece, or hourly rate, but being in their fold stands to benefit you in some way. You suck up your ego and do it for their brand recognition. It might rub off on you, and you might learn something along the way.
Because the power of Christ (or the universe, or your own desire, or insert favorite deity here) compels you: these are the jobs that may not make “sense” but they sound interesting and goshdarnit, you just want to do it. I have done many things in the name of a good story. This is the other “why” of writing — beyond the money (not a lot), beyond the status (debatable), one hopes that you actually enjoy doing it, if not in the moment, after the fact. A good friend once told me that there are three types of fun: 1) fun in the moment, 2) fun afterwards, and 3) not fun. Journalism and fiction, for me, tend to toggle between 1 and 2, and I embrace opportunities to lean into the former because they are few and far between.
Now, if an opportunity falls in that ultra-exclusive mid-point of the Venn diagram, then you’d better bet your J.Crew magic bank fold that you take it. With any luck, you can compound that opportunity, do it again, to quoth Steely Dan, and pull the levers so that it comprises more of your bottom line. If there were a formula for how to find these opportunities and multiply them, I’d be rich, or at the very least, in the self-help section of your local bookstore and coming soon to an arena near you.
What about opportunities that meet none of these criteria, or don’t rise to the level, or that stand to negatively impact your personal life, health, or sanity in some regard even as they line your wallet with Benjis and make people think you’re a genius?
You don’t do them. You politely decline. You conserve your reserves — because they’re not unlimited — for something else, because there will always be something else.
This part, I struggle with. Like many children of immigrants, I was raised to not say no to a job, especially if it’s well paying. “Can’t you find the time? Didn’t you want to be in this line of work? What will people say, think?”
If anything, by saying no, you might elevate your stature in the eyes of the “people” who will commend your self-restraint and come back to you in the future with a more appropriate job or story. Or they’ll forget about you. If the latter happens, they weren’t your people anyway. It’s just business!
Again though, I hesitate to preach like I’m at the top of Mount Writing because I weigh the “what if” of potential stories every day. For the time being, I will lean on this rubric, and if all else fails, put on that song.