Writing My Own Script

So. How’s it going, three weeks into my self-imposed exile from Corporate America? I get asked that often and my answer is the same: I’m still sorting things out. I’ve been surfing a bunch (managed to hit the bottom head-first during a wipe out; took a divot out of my skull — including, tragically, a swath of my already-thinning hair — and gave myself a monster case of whiplash); playing a bunch of pick-up hockey; no, not writing enough; but hey, I’ve been reading a bunch.

And one of the books I read recently was Blue Horizons, a compilation of Beth Leonard’s end-of-the-book columns from Blue Water Sailing magazine. The columns are, as the subtitle states, “dispatches from distant seas,” and unlike many cruising columns, Beth’s are not about turquoise waters and palm-tree-lined beaches. Rather, she and her partner, Evans Starzinger, explored a lot of high latitudes: Newfoundland, Scotland and Iceland, Patagonia, Tasmania and southern New Zealand (including one marathon passage of two months from Patagonia directly to Australia…yikes).

It should surprise no one who knows me that theirs was an itinerary that resonated on a primal level with me. Despite being firmly middle American throughout my life, I’ve managed to find myself living in some pretty interesting and challenging places. High latitudes? Yup: Alaska, and even northwest Montana and northern New England are places of long winters. In addition to Montana, I’ve also lived at other high-elevation homes of seasons and long, harsh winters: Utah and Idaho. And as I’ve recounted throughout this blog, I spent the summer of 2011 sailing at decidedly non-Caribbean of high latitudes of northern England, the Shetland Islands, northern Norway, the north coast of Iceland and Greenland.

So while I love surfing in trunks-only water and the idea of sipping rum drinks in a Caribbean lagoon really calls to me, Beth and Evan’s route marked them as the kind of sailors I’d like to model myself after. I read Blue Horizons, yes, to get still more inspiration to chase them and my oft-stated dream of sailing away. But what I hadn’t expected was a dose of reality that was even more inspiring than all the grandiose tales Beth told.

Because as the possibility that I COULD chase that dream arose recently, I’ve been concerned that maybe I was a fraud, a poser. That I’m not really cut out to sail away and it’s all been just a fairy-tale vision I’ve had. I’ve wondered if I hadn’t gone yet because deep down I don’t really want to. And why not? Because I’m scared. Sure, I’ve gone sailing for long stretches…but always on other people’s boats and at those friends’ instigation. There are some aspects about sailing that still unnerve me.

It may surprise you to know that pretty much every time I head out to sea after a long absence I get seasick for a good 24 hours or so. Not much of a sailor there, eh? And while I might seem to be the biggest hermit you know, in reality I’d really prefer to sail away with someone else who’s also interested in seeing what we can find. If I’m being honest, I’m nervous about actually throwing off the lines and sailing for the horizon.

So Beth’s advice to an equally nervous would-be cruiser really caught my attention. The neophyte asks Beth, “But how can I know if I should go or not?” Her reply:

You can’t. And if you have to know, then you shouldn’t go. But I can tell you this: if you feel the need to make a change in your life, if you’re dissatisfied with who you are and the path you’re on, any amount of time spent cruising will head you in a new direction.

Wow. Just 21 pages in and I already felt like sailing authority Beth Leonard was talking directly to me. I’ve written about my dissatisfaction with who I’ve been and the path I was on of late. But three weeks ago I took the first step in a new, still-to-be-determined direction, with the notion in the back of my head that it might be time to take the plunge and pursue that dream of mine that dates back to my pre-teen years. To read Beth Leonard tell tales of her being seasick, to hear her say that parts of the journey flat-out suck, well, it took some of the pressure off — and I realize that’s self-imposed pressure that everything always has to be rosy and cheery. More from Beth:

I think of myself eight years ago, certain I was heading in the wrong direction despite following the script laid out for me…With each step I took, I was moving farther from the person I had hoped to become. By setting sail, I stepped off that scripted path. I’ve been writing my own script ever since.
What’s cruising really like? It’s marvelous and terrible and scary and exhilarating.

Guess it’s time to write my own script. Thanks for the kick in the ass, Beth!

Ozymandias 2.0

I hadn’t been out of the water long when the push notification buzzed my phone at 8:25 a.m. It read: “At 8:30: Only KXXX-TV obtains surveillance video of a gunman robbing a donut shop in…” The moment I saw it, my heart sank as I immediately realized: everything my digital team at KXXX and I have been fighting for over the past two-and-a-half years has been for nothing.

It was a push alert that only two people — the current news director and station manager (who’s also the former news director) — would love. It did one thing and one thing only: it promoted a television newscast.

The problem is that the message was delivered by a digital messenger. And there was no digital payoff. A user who received that message had but one option if they were interested in the story: turn on the TV. Never mind that they might be at the supermarket or Starbucks, asleep in their bed or behind the wheel of their car. There was one way and one way only to engage with the information we had sent out — and that way was not via the device that had alerted them.

There was no link to a story. There was no video on the website. It was 100 percent cross-platform promotion. As such, it was just another spasm in the funky-chicken dance the television networks are doing right now.

Because while there was just one way to engage with the story, there was another, easier way NOT to engage: close the notification and continue on with your day. That was the much easier option, and one that even someone interested in the story would be forced to take if turning on their TV wasn’t possible at that particular moment.

All of this is lost on the management at my station and my corporation (for just three more business days, thankfully, not that I’m counting). It’s a station where the news director says, “I don’t know why we’re even building a digital business; TV makes the money.” And it’s a corporation where the national news director says, “TV makes dollars; digital makes dimes.”

For now, that’s true, Ms. and Mr. News Director. But you two see the ratings every single day. You know that you’re skimming a slice of an ever-shrinking pool. Where once you drew fives and tens for ratings, now you’re drawing ones and twos — and that’s for successful shows in big cities. Do the math. Digital already draws a bigger audience than your newscasts. What it doesn’t do is monetize that audience well. For now.

In a very short time, KXXX-TV and its parent corporation are going to look around and realize that it’s too late. That someone more agile, more focused on the no-longer-emerging-because-it’s-already-here digital world, has aced them out on the local-news front. This new lemming is running around delivering still-ripe digital content to that digital world, while the dinosaur is tossing its regurgitated stuff to its pet lemming, allowing that old, nutrient-poor stuff to be used only after it’s been sent out to the few people still watching TV: blue-haired folks even older than me. And the hundred-year-old-plus company will continue its slow fade to black having squandered its chance to make the next evolutionary step, a step identical to the one its founder made when he went from newspapers to radio, and from radio to TV. It’s an age-old maxim for a reason: adapt or perish.

I’ve detached from situation. I did that two weeks ago when I gave notice. (In truth: I detached months ago when it became clear that the news director and station manager could not be swayed by data or by best practices, but had already made up their own minds on what purpose digital served. So much for “we’re a data-driven company” and “Challenge the Process.”)

But I’m disappointed because I believed this company and station were perfectly set up to take that next evolutionary step. It’s the second time in my career that professional bean counters with old-world myopia have cut short what I thought was going to be a wonderful opportunity to build something digital that lasts. The first attempt, Citysearch, is now a poor man’s Yelp. Oh, what might have been. And the digital properties at my current station (and its sister stations across the country) are a poor man’s Google search result for news with prettier layout. Oh, what might have been. Hell, even the last print product I worked for, Alaska magazine, is but a shadow of its former self, each issue a fraction in size of what it once was.

That was the sad realization as I stripped off my wetsuit this morning: that my resume is a worn-down statue, half-buried in encroaching desert sands, crying out, “Look on my works!” Some of my individual writing is okay and I like to believe I’ve cultivated some great talents as a manager, but the properties I had hoped to help build that might have lasted have instead faded away, leaving little more than historical footnotes (if even that). Sobering indeed.

Here’s to the next phase in the lifelong journey. Maybe the statue can still be dusted off and cleaned up a bit.

It’s NOT a Midlife Crisis

In the spring of 1992 I packed up my Volkswagen camper van with my camping gear, my fishing gear and my dog for a summer-long exploration of Alaska. I called back to my place in Park City, Utah, and heard my roommate’s voice on the answering machine: “…and if you’re looking for Luke, he’s off searching for the meaning of life in Alaska.”

In reality, I wasn’t searching for the meaning of life. Like a lot of 20-something-year-old boys, I was following a woman. She was the first real love of my life — at least from MY perspective it was love — and my journals on the trip reflect the too-cliche teenage angst of what was clearly a one-sided devotion. (Yes, I was in my 20s but it was still teen aged: I was, and remain, very immature for my age. I prefer to think of myself as a late bloomer.) I knew it was over before I even started driving and when she finally lowered the boom in Anchorage — using the line I’d always used: “I’m just not ready for a relationship” — it still hit like a ton of bricks. Despite the fact I’d seen the bricks falling from several stories up, they still crushed my soul and buried me completely. For a time.

You’d think I’d have seen the signs earlier on: principally, the abjectly lousy sex, at a time in my life when what passed as good sex (to a 20-something male) was the very definition of “relationship.”

The irony is that I still had an amazing trip. A life-altering journey. I saw places I’d read about, thought about, dreamed about. And they were REAL. No, Buck and John Thornton weren’t around, but that sense of a young world permeated even the all-too-modern city of Anchorage. And that exploration of a different world ended up guiding my life from then on.

As it turns out, my roommate might have been right because I found the meaning of MY life. That journey set in motion the vagabonding that has been at the heart of the intervening quarter-century. In recent years I’ve slowed down, settling into careers and home ownership and (supposed) upward mobility. But sooner or later I’ve always found my way back out onto the hard edge.

And so I find myself now about to head back out there on lead. Don’t call it a “midlife crisis.” There’s no crisis at all. Quite the contrary: I’m ending the crisis that has been poisoning me from the inside for some time now. And I am assuredly well past the midpoint of my life so that part’s wrong too. Instead, call it a return to innocence. Not that true innocence is ever able to be recaptured, but there is still a semblance of that pure self hiding in all of us. I’ve been blessed that I’ve been able to scratch the surface and find him hiding under just a bit of dust. A shake, a sneeze and a big stretch, and he’s back in the saddle. Or at the helm. Or driver’s seat. Or on the trail. Or…you get the picture.

So now I get me hence. Over time, I’ll recap what has brought me to this current situation, what led me to this most recent — and hopefully final, for-the-rest-of-my-life — departure, but it will likely be all too familiar and thus, all too boring. But then again maybe it won’t. Some of it may even be pretty humorous. Wait and see.

I was nervous yesterday but I’m not now.