Work – Page 10 – HELLO, I'M SETH WERKHEISER

AOL MUSIC WEB PRODUCER

In an effort to completely remove myself from social media, I am moving my WORK HISTORY from LinkedIn to my site, which is a platform I own and control. This will help me tell more of the story of my work experience. I hope it’s helpful. Enjoy.

In April of 2006 I started my very first for-real web job, as a web producer at AOL Music. It was just a three month contract gig, covering for someone on maternity leave, with zero guarantee of anything afterwards.

I got this gig because I put my music blog (Buzzgrinder) on my Monster dot com resume, and a headhunter found me. I left a full time job with five weeks paid vacation for this gig, and looking back it was one of the best moves I ever made.

This was someone else’s set up, but I was able to plug in my iPod and listen to my own music while I worked. I wrote copy for weekly new songs and videos features, built and scheduled music main page graphical elements, and wrote daily headlines for Music Main news section.

Some of the people that worked at AOL Music recognized me from the referral traffic that Buzzgrinder sent them, which blew me away.

I remember seeing artists come in and perform acoustic in conference rooms, which was sort of the start of AOL Sessions.

I had typos on pages that were seen by millions. This is where I learned a valuable lesson from a co-worker, when he was sitting beside me while I got “talked to” for my mistake – “we’re not saving lives!”

Oh yeah, I auditioned to host The DL, which was AOL Music’s “music show,” but Sara Schaefer got the job and MURDERED IT. They picked the right person for the job on that one.

My time with AOL Music music last just 3-4 months (I can’t really remember how long it was), but I met a lot of amazing people along the way.

Oh yeah, around this time in 2006 the #1 music site on the internet was MySpace. Wild, right?

WHERE I WRITE

My desk is on wheels, so sometimes it faces east; sometimes, I swing it around so I can look west.

I use a standing desk that I bought in 2019 or so, before the pandemic. Attaching the power strip to the leg was a recent move, to make it easier to wheel around, with the cords getting caught under the wheels.

Yeah, the cords take away from the “minimal aesthetic,” but I need power, and my external HD plugged in, so whatever. This really works for me. I can’t stand having a lot of stuff on my desk while working, so having a small desk makes that easier.

Thanks to @Beth Kempton for these #meetthewriter prompts.

WE’RE TIRED

Tis the season to hear from almost everybody how frazzled, burnt out, at wits end they are! No energy! No motivation! No drive! Exploited and driven to exhaustion, with no energy to make things better, let alone make dinner tonight.

ENERGY

Sam Altman on burnout:

This quote is the clincher for me:

“Oh, actually when I’m doing this thing that I like and that is working I have a huge amount of energy and I can get a lot of stuff done.”

When I am doing things I loathe, I have zero energy, drive, or ambition.

Takeaway – do more of the things that give you energy.

Be around people that give you energy.

Watch and listen to things that give you energy.

BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER

A wonderful interview with Tina Roth Eisenberg (Swiss Miss), talking about creating and hosting Creative Mornings, and so many other gatherings of people.

“Be really clear why you’re gathering people.”

It also mentions The Art Of Gathering by Priya Parker, such a wonderful book and something I’ve been re-reading as I’ve been hosting more Zoom calls.

I mean it – career / work wise I’ve been WAITING. Hoping that someone would come along and just drop the perfect job / gig / NEXT THING in my lap. That’s how I’ve been for many years in my career… fortunate enough that some things led to other things, but in the last decade a lot of that work was work I settled on because I needed the money, which duh – is plenty okay, of course.

But now, lately, in these past two years, I’ve been deliberately carving out something, and in the last few MONTHS I’ve leaned hard into this “why not get together more often with energetic people?” space, and I swear, things are buzzing for me now, and I love it.

THIS IS EVERYTHING

Ira Glass sums it all up in this recent interview with Vulture:

It’s just crazy to me that people are having a hard time earning money making something so many other people clearly want.

Well, part of the problem is that people aren’t paying for it, right?

Right. They’re accustomed to getting it for free.

That’s the hole in the business model.

Most people ain’t paying for shit.

There was a time when Limp Bizkit sold a million albums in one week. Now artists on labels with managers and lawyers are lucky to sell 50,000 in a month.

You used to have to pay money to go see a movie. Now you pay a few bucks a month for a few streaming services and never buy another DVD

Podcasts, websites, newsletters – free, free, free.

Yes, a small percentage of diehard fans support via Patreon, or Substack, or whatever, but for the most part there’s been more entertainment options that exist in the world.

Think about the 100 or 200 or 1000 things we read a day, and watch, and listen to. In a DAY. A MONTH.

I pay my ISP $56/month, and some streaming services. I don’t think I spend $100 a month on everything, and I can fill my eyes and ears with “content” every second of every day.

And we’re all paying that $100 every month, and more (much more), and a few people are making money from making the things that everyone loves.

Again, from the interview: people are having a hard time earning money making something so many other people clearly want.

What the fuck?

ELBOWS KNEES AND HEADS

What the hell are we doing?

“Victor has found that projects pop up very late at night, so he is in the habit of waking every three hours or so to check his queue. When a task is there, he’ll stay awake as long as he can to work. Once, he stayed up 36 hours straight labeling elbows and knees and heads in photographs of crowds — he has no idea why.”

From ‘AI Is a Lot of Work,’ all about the for-real humans that make AI seemingly work.

“Work stripped of all its normal trappings: a schedule, colleagues, knowledge of what they were working on or whom they were working for. In fact, they rarely called it work at all — just “tasking.” They were taskers.”

We’re doomed.