Radio to Media, with Moms In-Between

I was just practicing, but my blog began calling to me, softly at first, then more insistently: "Please, come, post something in me... Forget about singing, exercise your writing muscles." Today, for reasons that escape me, I felt rather depressed despite a nice morning in which I did a radio interview at KPFA. Perhaps I mentioned my old magazine job too much. Or perhaps I just got into a navel-gazing frame and over analyzed everything I said afterwards. But going back to that irresistible navel-gazing, I don't want to come across as whining about being laid off. Perhaps that was one thing that bothered me. I think it's more an interesting aspect of a life's story, of how I left 10 years of "quiet desperation" behind with a swift kick in the maternity pants and jumped into a full embrace of my music career. I suppose the same goes for the motherhood stuff that I said in the interview. Again, I hope I don't come across as Kathy Lee Gifford, or perhaps her spiritual opposite, Ann Lamott. Motherhood defines me but I hope in a way that is relatable and fun, not remedial or dissective ...

I'm in a digressive mood, so I have to mention that on many school outings I notice that while all the parents are very interesting people, there are only one or two who actually do the kid stuff. Sometimes I feel pressure not to, since no other parents are playing Dance Dance Revolution at the arcade, for example, but eventually I end up doing flips on the trampoline or handstands in the pool or somersaults in the bouncy house or falling into the slippery and slightly gross pool of colored balls in the play structure. Maybe that makes me seem like a show off or someone who's trying to be young, but it just happens that I like those things (I promise my son I won't be doing teenage things when he's a teenager--well, unless he's into really cool things. Uh oh.).

Music, motherhood, now back to magazines...

I recently heard that another big group of folks have been put on the chopping block at CMP, my old employer. Some 20 percent of the workforce. The funny thing is, in a related story I read the CEO of IDG (another trade publisher) talking about how bloggers today can make $500,000 (sign me up!!!) and the new post-college course for journalists is to make a name for themselves as bloggers and become a star. How astute he is to realize that most quiet, inquisitive writers are actually salivating at the idea of becoming self-made celebrities. He also talked about how his company will use this blogging expertise for free by simply linking to it. (I love how they never seem to notice that 90 percent of the bloggers are laid-off magazine editors.) Oh, and they'll also have conferences where the community is the most important thing, because they realize that the hallway conversations are more important than the expensive keynotes. Nice idea, except that the companies those attendees work for won't shell out $3000 for them to go have a conversation in a hallway. More silliness from cash-strapped media corporations that don't know what to do about the Internet, other than fire all their skilled staff and try to emulate Google (which is ravenously recruiting the most intelligent staff every university on the planet can produce).