This was a really difficult week at work. The other editor I work with, whose main job is to run GayRVA.com but who also does some RVA Mag web posts and is in charge of our interns, went out of town for the week, so it fell to me to do his job as well as my own. Both of our jobs are full-time, and what’s more, due to the division of labor, a lot of his work is more important to keeping things running on a day to day basis than most of mine is. Therefore, to a great extent, my job got put on pause for a week while I spent most of my day doing things the other editor would normally do. I didn’t get nearly as many articles posted on the websites as we normally would, and it felt over the course of the week like I was doing less writing than ever. Of course, looking now at what I actually did, that’s not really true–which is weird to realize. I guess I was still finding time to do a good bit of writing this week. That’s probably also why I was working until 9 or 10 PM every night (at least until Friday, when I kind of threw my hands up in the air and said “fuck it” along about 3 PM). Anyway, here’s the stuff:
Things I’m actually proud of:
Weekly show preview column (2941 words): It was really hard to find the time and energy to get this done this week. This represented my latest night (didn’t stop working til after midnight on Tuesday) and my earliest morning (was at the office before 9:30 Wednesday morning, which is most of an hour earlier than I usually get there). Plus, stress and anxiety kept me from sleeping more than three or so hours on Tuesday night. But as I learned long ago from that legendary pass-catching reprobate Max McGee, It’s not the day after very little sleep that sucks, it’s the day after THAT (sure enough, I was worthless on Thursday). Anyway, this column may not be anywhere near the best of my weekly show preview columns, but I don’t think it’s totally terrible, and for better or for worse it is the real me.
Brief blurb about a new White Laces song (226 words): These dudes may be friends of mine, but they’re also one of the better bands in Richmond, and I’m glad their new LP (which I’ve had rough mixes of for months) is about to come out. They premiered a song on Noisey recently, and I reposted the song on our site with some positive words about the forthcoming new LP. You should click through and listen to this–these guys are seriously really good.
Things I wrote because it’s my job:
Intro for interview with Chazme 718 and Sepe (137 words): Another interview of Richmond Mural Project artists, part of a series I told you about last week. English was obviously not these Polish artists’ first language, so in order to capture the spirit of what they were trying to say, I had to do a fair bit of listening back to the interview tape and parsing out what they were getting at, in order to make the transcript more accurately reflect what they were saying. Thus the brackets and stuff in the interview.
Ticket giveaway for Panda Bear show in Charlottesville (373 words): Dude from Animal Collective, so of course our readers care, but honestly, I kinda don’t. Oh well, that’s the job sometimes–dispense some hype for an artist you don’t actually care about.
Intro for weekly Best of Missed Connections post (136 words): This is a weekly article that the other editor started up a month or two ago that tends to do well on hits without it requiring us to write a lot of words. Normally he does the intro and gets an intern to collect the posts, so I went with that plan this time as well, but then started nitpicking the intern’s choices for posts to spotlight and ended up replacing like half of them. So technically there was a bit more work involved here than just writing the intro, but since it’s typical shitty Buzzfeed aggregation/clickbait type work, it definitely doesn’t seem like it should count. Even if it did involve me staying up an extra hour on Tuesday night.
Hope Revolution tour ticket giveaway article (540 words): I give way more of a shit about this giveaway, for a tour featuring Hawthorne Heights and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, than I do about a Panda Bear tour. Meanwhile, my readers give way LESS of a shit about it–the Panda Bear giveaway got over 150 entries, the Hope Revolution tour giveaway got 30. Oh well–the kid who won these tickets was SUPER excited, and that’s what counts. Plus I got to write briefly about The Silence In Black And White, which is significantly better than I remember it being.
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