Note: For five years
I've wanted to keep a frequent-entry one-liner diary because our new
media world moves so quickly. We're already forgetting the most interesting
events and ideas. Here's my attempt.
 Monday,
February 14, 2000
 It's been
two years since I had a diary entry. In February
1998 I was building and marketing my 'Oldest Woman' site. But then I
got a full-time job that I thought would be everything I had ever wanted
to do with Knowledge Universe,
destined to be a major education portal. We would have a think tank,
develop new ways of learning with computers, lead the charge into the
21st century. I learned a lot there, managed a lot of websites, built
a great team, but in the end there was no think tank and there was nothing
really new.
Since then I continued to
work as a web executive producer. Today I am between jobs and having
a wonderful time visiting lots of companies. I feel more like a reporter
than an interviewee. I ask questions about business models, funding,
business plans, what the CEO is like, what he/she did before, etc. I'll
have to stop all this interviewing and take a job.
8 am: I wake up to
a call from the East coast. When will I fly to New York to meet the
guy I'd work for if I take this high level job in Manhattan - a web
developer for a Fortune 100. Lots of prestige in that. The guy's job
is to convince us creative types that it's okay to work for a tight
ass company. I've been dawdling for weeks.
8:30: I call a friend
my age (old) in New York City and ask her what it's like to be working
in New York in this decade of our lives. She's successful - has been
Editor of everything in NY - The Village Voice, New York Magazine, several
Conde Nast publications, her own magazine. She tells me that her pals
our age, herself included, just consult these days. I'm not sure I want
to lose 20 pounds to take a job and then wear all black and also have
to buy warm clothes.
9:30: I get another
call from a great company but it's in Sunnyvale, a horrible commute
from where I live. They are expecting me at work any day now - two days
a week for great compensation. My friends say take this job and have
some freedom. I'm thinking I'll be out looking again in three months.
I'm getting old.
10-12: Another company
is dawdling with their offer. They seem serious but offers aren't real
until I have that little old offer letter in hand. That's full time
and I see every hour of my life accounted for in the next two years.
Meanwhile I have to write
my columns. I miss my art studio; I have a great view at home but can't
paint here. I miss Maine because I was a painter there. I've put in
my time and I want my life to work out. I want to sit all day and create
content for my own websites. I want to get paid to do this, or becfunded,
and then sell the content and/or the company to someone.
This is what I and my early
buddies in this business always wanted to do - content
of our own. I've had lots of clients
in this business, but none of them ever allowed any humor on their sites.
As if there's any other way to keep people there. Perhaps the command
to "Add humor" is the sum of what I have to offer these clients.
2:00: My day goes
on. Possible employers call back and forth. Other new recruiters call.
I'm not working on my site. I pay my bills. I read a whole
novel about a woman keeping her marriage together. At the end it
says the author lives in Tiburon, the town next to mine. I want to call
her up.
3:00: My friend Sheri-Ann
the psychic calls. "How're you doin' Sher? You know what? I had
a vision. The job you went for the other day - the guy isn't going to
hire you but you'll be romantically involved! How am I doing?"
Sheri-Ann tells us we are
'baby' psychics because we don't get everything right. The guy she's
talking about is a CEO who met with me on a Saturday. He's gorgeous
like a movie star but we'll never be a number. Now I'm convinced we
are 'baby' psychics. Need a little more practice.
4:00: I receive a
beautiful valentine from an old boyfriend. It extolls the meaning of
our memories. I'm happy. I receive a letter with three screenplay treatments
from the previous old
boyfriend. These three outlines are so funny I laugh out loud a
lot.
4:30: I call my friend
Annie in Maine and we laugh
together. She's knows this budding writer. Annie
gives me his phone number and we talk for two hours. He has a perfect
memory. He's very happy because his father died unexpectedly of a heart
attack at 57 and this man thought he would die like that. But he's on
his way to sixty now, which seems to give him forty more years.
His screenplays are about
a 60 year old man with lots of former 19-year-old third world wives
and their children by him and about buying all the poorest countries
in the world to build a kingdom of his own.
I'll write my oldest woman
column now. I may only have a few days before I get locked up in some
corporate environment.
©2000
Sherry Miller. Comments.
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