Writer, musician, wizardly guide to platform independence
The work we create doesn’t has an expiration date. The photo books we make, or the poetry chapbook, the music video, the demo tape, the essay, the course, the piece of art. Most of our work is timeless yet we let it expire, starving it of attention as we move onto the next thing.
“Well, the last thing didn’t take off, might as well work on the new thing,” we say, even though maybe 100 people saw it the first time.
It amazes me how many times I see people’s websites with a BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL button, and not a single photo or video or snippet of audio.
Some are even paid. Pay $150 or $200 or $500 to hop on a Zoom call.
You want me to jump onto a call with a complete stranger?
After just reading some text and nice graphics?
In 2026, in the age if AI, show your humanity?!?
Give me evidence that you’re a sane, rational person who knows how to hold a conversation. Prove you’re not a total creep.
Here’s my “book a 1:1 call with me” page, the one that you have to pay for. With video.
Otherwise, here’s my free 15 minute offer. No video, but hey, if you make it to this page; you probably already know who I am.
I’m not saying you need a 4K camera and a $500 microphone – but building trust is an exchange.
I met Nikki Lerner back in 2019, from Seth Godin’s Freelancer’s Workshops. We’ve been talking almost every Monday on Zoom ever since.
We originally connected over work. She had just left an office job to strike out on her own, I was trying to make my “helping busy music publicists with their digital dirty work” thing work better.
We used to over think the tiny bits, now we seek alignment in our work.
Last summer Nikki (a life long musician) wanted to work more in music, and wasn’t sure how it’d pay any bills, but just knew she had to do it.
So she formed a choir, and that led to a job offer (and more time working in music).
Sometimes we need to push into the work we want to be doing, even without any clear path of anything working out. Dare to start building ways to create tiny moments of fulfillment.
This from January 5, 2007, from my Flickr account:
Freaking A, right. Giant screen. Nice speakers. Working with a mac at work is a dream. Also note the stack of Final Cut Pro 5 books over on the right. Yea, I need to learn Final Cut Pro for this job. Not a bad deal.
And if you didn’t know, I started a job at Field and Stream Magazine on Jan 2nd.
From a post I wrote about my time working on TypePad blog and hand coding HTML newsletters:
I built and maintained several TypePad blogs, one of which appeared on The Colbert Report because one of the authors pissed off a bunch of people, and it created a bit 2nd amendment debate. The blog post was removed, then re-posted, I think. Details are fuzzy, but it I sure do remember perking up when Stephen Colbert flashed the magazine cover on the screen.
It was 13 years ago today that NPR’s Ask Me Another Twitter account gave my Skull Toaster project a little shout.
I posted well over 2,000 nerdy metal trivia questions on Twitter, and also over 1,000 email newsletters with the answers (and backstory). From 2011-2018 I did this as a living resume; showing potential companies that I could build audience, build community, and handle daily content for both social media and email newsletters, which is now the basis of my work over a decade later.
This stuff takes time. Don’t let the online guru’s fool you – it’s not as easy as just “pick your niche” and then “post content.” Anyone can buy a domain name and post for a month, but it takes belief and vision to do it for the long haul, even with no guarantee of making $10,000/MRR or an email list with 5,000 subscribers.
I wrote recently, “I felt a pang in my stomach, of how I’m not writing and publishing enough, or sending enough newsletters every week.”
That’s especially true for this blog, but I’ve been posting every day over on my Social Media Escape Club site.
And setting up interviews. And planning things out. Raising rates on my sales pages. Sending video messages to people. I talked on the phone for FIVE HOURS the other night with my best friend.
Just now I hosted an hour long Zoom call with a special guest and it was lovely. The right people came together into the right space to be together for this one magical moment that we’ll never have again.
Afterwards I got an email from our guest, saying “Your gang is a hoot.”
I love my job.
Sure, leave it until January 6 of 2026 to finally update my About Page.
That photo above is from like 2008 or 2009.
The shirt is from the music blog I started in 2001, freaking 25 years ago.
Sometimes you just wake up at 4am and can’t get back to sleep so you start planing out a podcast series that you’d announce and launch on the day you host a big online event. What if?
Love this from Jen Mayer of Makeist.
I’m not looking for a job. I’m not waiting to be hired. I’m not leaving it to luck.
I’m making the connections. I’m connecting the dots.
I am actively and intentionally creating my calling: a career I never want to retire from, and a life I don’t need a vacation from.
This is the work: building Makeist into something that’s not just a business, but a life.
Here’s to not looking for a job in 2026.
Back when I ran Noisecreep for AOL Music (2008-2011), the incoming email never stopped. I’d tend to emails till midnight, then wake up to my inbox.
I remember the first day after I left, and I went for a hike and felt such a relief from the inbox.
It’s now 2025, and my freelance work email is very tolerable. I am blessed to have a handful of clients who pay well and don’t email me throughout the day, so that’s great.
Back in 2021 I stared Social Media Escape Club, because I just wanted to talk to more about leaving social media. In 2023 I decided I’d start hosting Zoom calls to talk to even more folks, (virtually) face to face!
Now I’ve got a good problem – an inbox filled with messages from people revolving around the work I want to do.
As I just quoted American theatre and opera director Anne Bogart, “a good omen is ‘a moment when the world seems to answer you back. It is not a guarantee of success, but a charged sign that your attention, your desire, and the circumstances have aligned in a way that invites you to proceed – more awake, more responsible, and more brave.'”
I’ve acknowledged the all of the good energy around this, “is not a guarantee of success,” but now I am “more awake, more responsible, and more brave,” and that’s all I want.