i did good today

i get clogged on sundays because i never want to turn on church

but once i turn it on im happy and todays sermon was good.

then i turned on the cubs.

then i walked to the store talking to mom.

then i finally got to finishing up tomorrows podast.

i am the most ridiculous procrastinator ever for this right now.

i really need to do uber so i can do something productive with all this spare time im just killing doing nothing.

but i wouldnt drive on sundays.

Lord’s day.

dear unemployed ppl

i know it’s hard. i am in the middle of it right now and it’s super hard.

sometimes i have noticed that weird crazy magical shit happens when your back is up against the wall.

you do things you wouldnt normally do.

things your mind says Only Even Think About in case of an emergency

the emergency is approaching.

i find myself on Linked In applying for jobs i know im overqualified for but if this was sports, would the MVP of the league stop playing because he is clearly better than everyone else at that position?

then why do we do that IRL?

im gonna get out from under this cloud.

i always have.

things are gonna get better.

then things are gonna rock.

just like in olden times.

have i been busy?

sheeeeeeeet

today i was interviewing one dude and when it was over i asked

do you have any neighbors i should interview?

he said, i have a neighbor who played bass with bob dylan

during the infidels tour

and also grew up with Andy Kaufman

i am busy and lucky and i love you and i hope you love whats coming up next

who am i?

i accomplished so much this weekend.

i wrote an email, left it in draft to see if i needed to send it.

sent it.

did part one of a blog post that has to go out Monday, then finished it today.

as planned? what?

i scheduled FIVE hear in LA interviews for this upcoming week.

am i nuts?

and then i saved the Oscars

whats crazy about that one is i got a lot of really good feedback telling me they either

loved the idea

or it would be stolen (good!)

or there were some good points in it.

a lot of time i get zero feedback for my wild ideas, but this one hit home

AND it was published on a Sunday at 5pm – a time “experts” say

is a terrible time to put anything online because ppl are not at work goofing off.

i have always said, good content will get shared no matter when you publish it.

and i stand by it.

ok gotta go to the val tomorrow for two of my interviews.

53 days ago i submitted an invoice

in fairness it was a second invoice.

the first one was 71 days ago.

when you write an invoice on December 1 you think, ah what nice Christmas gifts I’ll be able to buy my family with that money.

a few weeks later I wrote a different invoice for 19 days of December and submitted that one as well.

that was 53 days ago.

neither have turned into monies.

2021 was not a great year for me financially and those two invoices were the 2nd and 3rd that have not been paid as of yet.

in total i am owed over $10,000 for work in 2021. hard to believe.

of the replies I have received when i inquired about remittance:

fuck you tony

and

you’re an asshole.

being raised in a community as a young man where i was the only Black kid in many situations, trust me when i tell you, name calling does not affect me.

i know who i am.

but those who i owe do not want to hear sob stories or “they called me an asshole and said it’s coming, what can i do?”

after 53 days is it really coming?

is it in one of those ships off long beach, polluting the air, waiting for a truck to get it at the dock and deliver it to my home.

the one i pay rent on.

who has a landlord who will say, “oh you’ll tell me when it comes? thank heavens.”

in the college of creative studies when they were teaching us how to write fiction they said, “when you write interesting characters think about their motivations. think about whats going in their heads. why do they say the things they do, why do they not say things.”

what could go through someone’s head when they know its been 53 days since the Second invoice?

and why aren’t they saying, “i’m sorry, tony. you’re not an asshole for asking. i am an asshole for not making this happen in a timely, professional way”?

54.

 

the longest job i ever had was writing social media for the academy

so when bizarre tweets like this pop up, like it did today

i’ll get DMs and texts and etc asking “holy crap man, what was that tweet all about?”

and i have to explain that i havent worked there for years

and for the last half of the time i was there i had to go through extreme scrutiny to get

any

of my proposed tweets and instagram posts through

because i no longer had a boss who could shield me from those who didnt truly

live and breathe social media like i do.

so they didnt get it.

imagine if there was a committee who had the power to tell Led Zeppelin

dudes Stairway to Heaven is too long, can you trim 3-4 minutes from it?

and how about give the album a name?

youre trying to do your thing and be creative and witty

AND trying to gain followers all while maintaining a sense of the brand people love

with a fresh spin that is slightly unexpected

and may i say daring.

so i get it why someone in my old seat would *want* to make this tweet

and i also get why there may not be anyone there now who could give that person constructive criticism as to why they should throw it right in the trash

and i am super grateful that for two years i had a boss who could communicate with me in such a way that we could check off all the boxes:

  • interesting
  • insightful
  • fresh
  • unique to our brand and our assets
  • something others would want to share

when youre dealing with a 90 year old organization that aint easy

especially when the peanut gallery hears Stairway to Heaven and says

this isn’t at all like Whole Lotta Love, what gives?

if i was running the show over there the first thing i would say to the person creating the content is

women have it hard enough,

whore is a powerful word

in context of that movie it means one thing

but out of context, on our feed, even with what you think is a funny caption

it’s easily misunderstood and

should be avoided

in part because

of all the great lines written in the scripts of our overstuffed archives

that one was not one of them.

do you know i love you? i do.

over the last few months ive been burning the candle at both ends.

working and working on two very different things, both hard, but rewarding.

yesterday on the subway i was told that i would have more time to work on the other thing

which is fine, but a lot of what i had been working on for them was figuring out how to figure it out.

we had an SEO guy at the Times come in for a while and he was fantastic and i think in the room of 50, i was one of the very few who totally understood what he was saying because i am a super nerd for that sort of thing.

so when i went to KPCC, he was the first guy i had them consult with.

it was there that i realized why everyone spaced out to him at the Times: no one wants to hear the magic doesnt work overnight.

the internet and search and social media, combined, is the most finicky, unpredictable wyld stallion who does not want to be figured out or gamed or mastered because once that happens

spamming will ruin it all.

even when you figure out something you’re probably better off not exploiting it in major ways because the other thing about the internet is theres scoreboards everywhere

you want a slow, steady, reasonable, understandable climb.

it took a good year at the Academy to get the ball rolling. and that was an extremely familiar and rightfully beloved brand. top of the heap. and still it was an aircraft carrier that resisted turning and speeding up.

time takes time, ringo.

if youre gonna play a pinball machine for a year, you should, for sure, tilt it in the first game to see where the sidelines are. but then people call you the tilter.

if i could go back in time, i would, so i could learn a few things

one: kpcc to find out what i coulda done there to make it work

because that scoreboard barely moved.

im dying to find out why.

is this blog good or bad when interviewing for jobs?

21 years ago i was part of a very small team that hired over 400 people.

i did my best as that Recruiter to try to see into the hearts of prospective employees

to see if they would like the job, work well with the crew, and be good to the customer.

you really only had a few minutes to make this determination

the few minutes you scanned the resume, the 20 minutes on the phone call

and the 60 minutes in the interview.

some people judged people with how they followed up if the process was taking long

but i didn’t.

the process should not take long. that was on me.

still, some prospective employees dressed provocatively in the interview

which, interesting as it was, a negative checkmark

some people were almost overly prepared, spitting back info about the company that clearly PR put on some dusty corner of the website

and even though it should have been a negative checkmark, at least they were trying

this blog is twenty years of a writer writing in

his

dusty little corner of the web.

i am an open person. i wish more were.

i appreciate when i stumble across something that seems so personal and real.

and i am sad there are fewer of those out there because

i think people are wonderful and we dont have that long to be examples of that.

this blog was weirdly launched a month before 9/11. it saw the first Black president and every episode of Lost.

it documents me going from disgruntled bus rider in a job that didn’t love me to watching the Cubs win the World Series

one game in person.

sometimes i worry that portions will be taken out of context and give someone a reason to give me more than a few negative checkmarks but

what i learned from hiring all those people

was sometimes i made the wrong choice.

of course its bound to happen with that many hires in a short period of time

but nobody wants to make mistakes like that.

this job tomorrow im pretty sure id be great at

and im pretty sure it would allow me to use some of the things i learned

from my last job

and take it to a different level.

and that is exciting.

but i dont know how that crew is,

and that dynamic, i have seen, makes all the difference.

unimately, i just want to be a good element

a positive check mark

among others.

all i wanna do is do well

i have a job interview next week for a job i really want

i want it for a few reasons including the fact that it is new technology

sitting on top of different ground breaking tech

mixed with social media and communities

right up my alley, right?

so you’d think.

i dont know if it’ll come up in this interview or if i get a second one with them, in that one

but i just wanna tell them

i just wanna be good.

i was debating with a stranger the other day about office dynamics

and say you have a staff of 300 people, how many are replaceable

and how many, if you lost them, you’d really notice them not being there

it was a terrible debate because these are peoples lives and careers we are talking about and shits bad enough

but when i was thinking about that particular place i had a hard time thinking about 10 percent that were truly irreplaceable.

for example, you cannot replace michael jordan, walter payton, or even sammy sosa – love them or hate them.

yeah you can start another running back, but there was only one Sweetness.

who doesnt want to be one of those 10%?

but do they work out like those guys did? do they study? do they take risks? are they courageous? are they always always always figuring out ways to improve and dominate their position?

and not in a nasty way, HIS NICKNAME WAS LITERALLY SWEETNESS

i want to be one of those 10%

i want to be one of the people someone says are you kidding, tony, i love seeing him here. fuck.

but how do you say that on a zoom call when the strangers are far from the camera in a meeting room?

 

you whisper

didnt get the job i was perfect for

and heres why its ok.

after kpcc i just could not get a gig to save my life. if it wasnt for my friend amy i dont even know what i would have done.

she got me some freelance work that paid really good. it was hard but it paid.

then someone from the LA Times told me about the Oscars job and — do you know how much i love the Oscars? suddenly im working there. going to it. socialmediaing it? improving the numbers. talking to the people. learning the things?

if i had just gotten the ok job right outta kpcc, i would have never gotten the incredible job months and months later.

was i in a terrible funk in between those two? yes. terrrrible. i even went into fox news’ hq in nyc and interviewed for a job. i was maybe gonna move. while there the oscars called and said whats up. i was all im in nyc because obvs my life is over.

and they were all well get back here because out of 1000 applicants you’re tony pierce.

so whats crazy about todays denial, they know me. they reached out to me. then they made me jump through a hoop on the other side of the moon. and i jumped and flew around and stuck the landing.

and still no. which is totally fine because sometimes it’s nice to have to jump high and show what youre made of. and do things in a few weeks that whoever they chose couldnt do in years.

if anything to just see yourself that you can do it. and be funny. and be fresh. and be right on the money.

im gonna do my own thing going forward.

i dont ever want to be in a situation where one or two people determine my future.

the first half of my life was that and it was interesting but fuck that shit.

the things i have done have value and the things i know i can do have even more.

why am i splitting it with them with me getting the tiniest fraction?

the season of lent is not about giving up things but having a different relationship to the things we do through the rest of the year.

im gonna write my ass off on medium

then podcast my ass off like the freak i am.