Sometimes, yes, you have to quit what you love

I loathe the "you just need grit to get what you want" pep talks. 

I abhor "Dream it, want it the most, and it WILL happen" advice. 

Because here's the reality: 

People who achieve their dreams and get what they want are NOT always the grittiest, nor the people that "wanted it" the most, nor the hardest workers. 

Also, I regularly meet people who had just as much, if not more, grit and determination and creative ideas as some of the most successful people out there, and they didn't get that career, or that fellowship, or that big sale of their project, that far less talented or determined people have achieved. 

And as arrogant this sounds, I have met oh-so-many people in jobs that I deserved way, way more than they did, based on my experience, talent and grit. 

I touched on this a bit in my blog back in May, You are smart! when I wrote:

In her first book, Michelle Obama noted that she has been at the table with leaders of countries, corporations and foundations, that as a lawyer she worked with powerful corporate folks and served on corporate boards, that she's met oh-so-many people from the United Nations, and she has realized, they are not that smart, they are not brainy super humans. It isn't to say that these leaders aren't capable of the work at hand, that none of them should be in those roles, etc. But they really are not THAT smart, no hugely smarter than YOU.

I'm much closer to 60 than I want to be, and as I've lamented oh-so-many times, the last 20 years, with just a few brief exceptions, have regularly gutted me professionally. I keep trying to be at peace with how these 20 years have gone, and how I'm not where I intended to be professionally speaking, and while I've made some good progress, I still have moments where I get lost in mourning. 

This piece from Freakonomics Radio, about failure, about how grit is NOT always enough to get you to your professional dream, was what I really needed. I found it liberating. I strongly urge you to listen to it. Lots of interviews with people who have failed, who don't have a "but, eventually, I got there!" endings. I didn't feel hopeless afterward - I felt comforted. 

The reality is that, for about 20 years, my life regularly turned out WAY better, professionally-speaking, than I had ever dreamed. So many of those fantastic jobs I had felt like they just dropped in my lap, that I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. I'm so grateful for those experiences. I just wish I'd leveraged them a bit better with an eye to what I would need later. 

Anyway...  

Also see these previous blogs of mine, if you want to see just how much I've struggled with failure and aging and, sometimes, my own advice for dealing with it:

Gen X, struggling for employment? I hear you.

Job searches: they never get easier.

Lesson learned. Again.

Failure and triumph.

Jezebel blog shut down

Jezebel has been shut down by its owner, G/O Media. 

The site of feminist commentary and news was launched with the tagline "Celebrity. Sex. Fashion. Without airbrushing." A 2007 post by editor Moe Tkacik, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, said, "Jezebel is a blog for women that will attempt to take all the essentially meaningless but sweet stuff directed our way and give it a little more meaning, while taking more the serious stuff and making it more fun, or more personal, or at the very least the subject of our highly sophisticated brand of sex joke. Basically, we wanted to make the sort of women's magazine we'd want to read."

The Writers Guild of America-East, which represents G/O Media staffers, said in a statement, “A well-run company would have moved away from an advertising model, but instead they are shuttering the brand entirely because of their strategic and commercial ineptitude. Jezebel was a good website.”

The name Jezebel is a name writers of the two books of Kings in the Bible gave to a wife of Ahab, King of Israel, two hundred years after she existed (if she existed at all). The compilers of the biblical accounts of Jezebel and her family were writing in the southern kingdom of Judah centuries after the events they are supposedly depicting, which happened elsewhere. The name Jezebel is now associated with sexual promiscuity and with women who seek to control others - it is a derogatory term that the blog flaunted, and I loved it for that. 

According to the newly laid-off employee, G/O Media editorial director Lea Goldman had reassured Jezebel staffers in recent weeks that Spanfeller was not looking to shutter the site. So, clearly, Goldman lied. 

I am so upset at this news! Jezebel was not only incredibly fun, it not only explained trending celebrity gossip in a way that made such relevant and interesting, it wasn't just an echo chamber for feminism: it challenged me so often, made me reconsider so many things. I didn't always change my mind, but if I did, it was often because of how an issue was reframed by Jezebel. Plus, my c*nts on c*nts on c*nts sticker from Jezebel on my motorcycle top case was found to be oh-so-amusing to three guys on Vancouver Island recently, and offensive to all those I want it to be offensive to.

A major source of contention has come with automation and AI. In the summer of this year, the (parent) company announced that they planned to publish stories using AI, which resulted in stories that contained false information.

AI is so lousy at writing and even worse at accuracy - but the people holding the purse strings love it nonetheless. So, no more insightful, thoughtful commentary, no more framing of entertainment news in a way that made me care, no more biting insights that challenge how I think. Just crappy coppy and clickbait. 

The world needs Jezebel.