Sweet Home Alabama just hit the radio. It’s 2:22 am. I’ve cracked my second beer. We’re getting passed by a mini van. Moab is in our sights. Sweet.
More to come, but I’m zonked after nearly 800 miles of driving and two days in the desert. Photos are straight from the camera so be nice on the touchup.
-Tim
Took approximately four days, but finally after an amazing day of coffee, elevation, wilderness and beer I’m back.
Thought long and hard about putting up the pics, they are shot with a pos digital, so forgive the quality.
1) Last Drop of coffee at the Laughing Goat
2) Pre Mud Season in Boulder
3) Peace at 8,340 ft.
4) The backside of Boulder as a storm creeps in
Went hiking last night for a few hours in El Dorado Canyon. Shot some video and experimenting a bit with Youtube. Sorry the quality is poor, but for a free site, can’t complain too much.
PS: This is why I love living in Colorado.
It was hot, just under 100 degrees when I was there, and local kids were playing in one of the many parks around the city. I grabbed my camera and secured the following shots.
It is so competitive for an Internship today, the free labor that most of America’s media giants rely on, that people are actually paying to get in. Harper’s Bazaar is offering a one-month internship with them as part of Bette Midler’s New York Restoration Project’s Hulaween Auction. The magazine, one of the largest fashion rags on the market, is donating the Internship in the name of charity.
Myself, a struggling 25-year-old Intern, can’t believe his eyes. Internships are part of the professional fabric when it comes to piecing together a successful career in today’s media. Editors talk greatly about the need to understand the pain of relentless fact checking, getting coffee, stuffing media packets and working with little to no pay. It’s a right of passage almost every successful editor has been though, and many point to it as the reason they are successful. But it’s changing. So fast actually, that it has become a class war, where the poor are left helpless, scratching for clips and the opportunity to succeed, while the rich roll in, designer sleeves up and drink copious amounts of beer at happy hour after turning off their computer.
Just about four months ago I was rejected for Outside Magazines Internship. I was willing to leave a well paying job, pack up my life and move four states away to make $8.15 an hour. The research editor told me I didn’t have enough experience in my resume and therefore would not work.
I stood there, phone in hand, mouth open, ready to scream. “What do you want me to do!” I wanted to yell. “I am on my own financially, have been reduced to working to live at a young age when some of my competition is benefiting from daddy and mommy. Here I am willing to sacrifice just about every materialistic item I have to fact check for you and eat pasta every night!” I was distraught, upset, livid and more determined than ever.
Four weeks ago while sitting in a turnout somewhere outside of Chicago, I had my first and only Interview with Backpacker magazine. I remember praying before hand asking God to guide me in the right direction. I was edgy inside, unsettled and anxious. This was my chance to show them that even though I don’t have a masters degree, clips from the AP while working in France, or a high-level contact inside their magazine, that I was qualified for the position.
I don’t exactly remember the interview, but what I do remember is that the words seemed to come to me effortlessly. When asked delicate complex questions, I provided short concise answers that proved I had done my homework and understood the industry. When it was over I felt relieved, almost sure that I was at least in the running. That night I ended my month-long journey drinking beer with a very wise man who opened up my eyes by being vulnerable in wisdom.
“Find out what you can provide,” he said, “and hone that skill. You may be able to write well, but is it writing that you enjoy? Or storytelling? So many people try to do it all themselves, but what you don’t know, is that you may meet someone that can take your skill and bring it to the masses. When you find your skill, work on the vehicles to get it out there, but until then, work hard, work smart and always push yourself.”
Our conversation lasted over three hours, and it changed my life. At the end we discussed the Internship with Backpacker. We talked about the pros, the cons and the advantages to ending my trip early and pursuing my dream. It was clear by the end of the night that given the chance I would drive west the next day and find a place to live in Boulder, Colorado.
The past three weeks have been a blur. The past two have found my immersed in Backpacker’s office, wide-eyed and grinning from ear to ear. But regardless of how well I do, how much impact I make, there is still the great possibility of being laid off in six months when my Internship ends and going back to unemployment. It’s that uncertainty, that level of vulnerability that seems to set the dedicated apart from the wishy-washy. Unless of course you are able to pay the bills without a paycheck, then it would just be another adventure.
“I don’t have a problem being the 31-year-old Intern,” a fellow Intern at Backpacker said yesterday on the drive home. “It’s what you have to do,” she added. I nodded my head in agreement. She was dead on.
It makes me wonder if whoever bids the most for Harper’s Bazaar really wants to be there as much as the washed-up hardworking American girl waiting tables and stringing for a small daily to build clips. I know it’s not a fair world out there, but paying to participate in an Internship? Have we gone too far? It’s almost like paying for people to vouch that you worked for them on your resume, and last time I checked that took money, not skill.
Life is now in fast-forward. It is a new job, new town, new gym, new people, new bars, frantically trying to figure out how to pay the bills and now wrapped up in the World Series.
In the last 24 hours I’ve driven though Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and the most boring part of Colorado, only to find place to live, decide not to buy a plane ticket back home, and begin looking for a used bed, desk, lamp and chair on Craigslist.
And then everything changed.
Within two hours from finding what I thought was the perfect place, I’d signed a lease for a 2-year-old fully furnished condo with a roommate who may be heading to London for a few months leaving me the place while he’s gone. The deal, 500 a month including utilities, means a queen size bed, dresser, 42 inch plasma, high-def, storage, quick access to work, and for icing on the cake, St. Peter and Paul Orthodox church three blocks down the road.
Seriously folks, I can’t make this stuff up.
Now a bit about the job.
I’ll be working for Backpacker Magazine as an Intern in their map department. I didn’t sign an NDA during my interview and don’t know their policy on blogging, so I’m going to stay vague at this point. What I can say is that I will get the opportunity to work for a magazine that is at the collision of traditional media and new media. If I’m lucky I’ll be able to listen to weathered editors and journalists debate the merits of video, blogging and podcasting in a real-world non-academic setting where the bottom line is what matters, and not a fabricated grade.
For a young professional with a passion for the outdoors and a knack for tech, the opportunity is ideal.
Now the hard part.
Since I’m an Intern I’m taking a pay cut. One of my old friends in PR just informed me that her daughter’s boyfriend, who is 19 and degreeless, is making more than me at Starbucks. My own brother working for a computer repair guy is passing me up as well. But regardless of the pay this is what I wanted to do all along, and as one very wise man told me a few weeks back, “We create roadblocks that are based on fear and insecurity. Money is one of those roadblocks. There is reality—a house, food, clothes, and then there is roadblocks—plasma TV’s, cell phones, beer. You [speaking about me] sound like you are putting up roadblocks.”
Like it or not he was right.
So I’m going to take a leap of faith and hold my breath. It might mean a second job like a stint at bartending, or back to the bright lights of Best Buy on the weekends. (God I hope not) But regardless, I’m going to have to make sacrifices that I haven’t been forced to make since college, and I’m excited about holding my destiny in my own hands. In the next six months I hope to learn, listen, produce and become a valuable member of the Backpacker team.
Hold your breath folks, I’m sure this is going to be quite the wild ride, and mom if you’re reading this, please just send money, it’s easier if you just send it and I don’t have to ask every month. Thanks!
All good things must come to an end…and new doors must open. (Sounds cliché I know, but figured it was a good way to say I landed a job)
I’ll leave the long winded post till tomorrow when I don’t have to drive 13 hours to Boulder, but until then I can say I’ll be working as an intern for Backpacker Magazine for the next six months. The money isn’t amazing, and my friends in PR will be laughing, but it’s what I’ve always wanted to do, and if I can’t live in Santa Cruz, Boulder is the next logical choice.
Lets just hope the Rockies go to the series so I can be a bandwagon fan.
Hope you all are well and I’ll write more soon.
Tim
(Written last Friday 10/5 – not published till now due to computer problems)
Last night was tough. Not in the I’m-sleeping-at-Wal-mart-and-these-guys-want-to-steal-my-rims type of way, but in the this-is-who-I-am-and-you-are-really-pushing-me type of way.
Let me explain.
I’m in St. Paul, MN at the moment, sitting on the porch of an immaculate house built in the late 1800’s. Inside the house lives a very smart man, who also happens to be wildly neurotic and during the period of two hours, flipped my reality upside down and shook my foundation.
It is not appropriate to go into too many details at this point, mainly because anything I say would be reactionary bullshit, but it is appropriate to talk about some of the larger themes of the discussion—The ones that left me scratching my head.
Halfway through out talk, Ken asked me why I believed in the social class structure. Now he didn’t quite phrase it like that, he’s a tenured communications professor so his words are a bit too big for my spell check, but what he was asking was why I thought there were roadblocks erected in my way.
During the majority of the conversation, Ken had asked me to describe my dream job. I rattled off the standard freelance writer gig, gym ownership idea, and business consultant, but he wasn’t buying the standard rhetoric.
Instead he wanted to know what my skills were, how they would provided value to a company, and how I was going to stop talking about things and go out there and do them.
I was left speechless.
Ken then told me a story about luck, and how being in the right place at the right time can be important. But after the story he told me how it didn’t change anything except give the participant a leg up. So why then was I making excuses for why I couldn’t do what I wanted?
I instantly got defensive. I rattled off what the guy at Outside said about my lack of participation in the journalism field, or how it seems today employers want you to give your entire identity to one specific job and hone your skills in a very narrow way.
I then went into talking about how Gen Y does not believe in the old Gen X work ethic, and that we tend to see through fake sincerity and corporate bullshit quickly.
But he didn’t buy any of it.
The unfortunate thing is that I don’t know enough about Ken to have a clear understanding of where he is coming from. What I do know is that a mutual friend who I respect greatly thinks very highly of him. Ken also has traveled the world, had a family and teaches extremely rigorous classes at the graduate level. That alone means he did something right I have to assume.
So when he gives me advice and pushes my own understanding of who I am, it forced me to work hard at consciously not getting defensive, but instead listen to his ideas, which is what this walkabout is all about. Expanding my horizons, pushing my boundaries and falling down every once and a while.
I’ll write a bit more when I have had time to think about our conversation and what I means to my own ideology, but until then, please enjoy the pics from my few days in Minnesota.
Start Secret Message:
James they have these all over the place. I almost killed myself when I saw the first one because I wanted to get a picture for you. Rumor has it that they THROW things away once they buy new ones.
End Secret Message:
Taken on a back road in Iowa minutes before the light disappeared.
