May 17, 2005For the last month or so, I've been blogging here, in the form of letters on Sploid.com with my delightful co-worker Ken Layne.
But that's going to come to an end quite soon, as I've finally decided to leave Gawker Media, at which I've been quite lucky to be employed in various capacities since August of 2003.
I've been thinking about what to do, what to do with the rest of my life for a while. And finally, I came up with an answer: I have no idea.
But, in the meantime, someone finally made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I might have to move to Brooklyn to afford working there, and worse, the job requires me to leave the house and do "reporting." It even requires me going into an "office," which I'm not sure I remember how to do. (Did I ever actually go to an office? Hmm. Not since I was a paralegal, actually, years and years ago.)
I am a big whiny baby.
But it's at the paper where I had my very first byline, and where I've written some of my very favorite things, and where I've always had the most fun. It's the paper that looked me up in the phonebook after I wrote something insane on The Morning News (something which upon re-reading now, WOW, could really use a good heavy edit) and, anyway, Peter Kaplan, the editor, rang me up and said, "Hey, kid, you're alright. You're reporting to Maria Russo, features editor. Welcome aboard." (I swear.) And I though, who the hell the what now? The fun hasn't stopped.
I love newspapers. I like them so much -- "treeware" or dead tree media or whatever you want to call them -- they're efficient, disposable, entertaining, and sexy. And I'd probably last five minutes at one of the magazines in town. I don't actually care about shopping, girls in swimsuits, or where to eat, it turns out. And since New York mag didn't think to offer me their theater critic gig after they pulled the plug on nasty old John Simon last week, heh, well, there was really no place I would ever want to go besides the New York Observer.
I'll be editing and writing the Transom column, which reports on a certain species of New Yorker from the lip of their terrarium. In a way, I'll be even more of a co-worker with my pal Jessica at Gawker than I am now, just with different means and ends. That'll be fun.
What was I talking about again? Oh yeah. To summarize: I don't know what I'm doing, but it'll be pink, it'll be weekly, I have some schemes, and it'll be online. See you there.
