Your Unemployed Daughter

I was reminded by a former coworker that yesterday was the one-year anniversary of our dear old departed mag folding.

I remember that day fairly vividly: the confusion when my direct deposit paycheck didn’t go into my account (once in the office we were handed “live checks” by the suits who came to deliver the bad news); my anger that once again the bigwigs were trying to skinflint us (we’d been plagued with financial problems in that last month or three and my job had became, essentially, arguing with AP to get our freelancers paid); my heated conversation with the editor-in-chief over what he was doing to protect us…

And yet I had no real sense that this was actually the end until I walked into the small conference room where there were bagels on the table, as if any of us could eat, and was witness to the complete hatred between my EIC and the man who was the president, whatever that means, of the company.

Then there was the chaos outside the boardroom, people clamoring to know what we weren’t supposed to tell them, because there was to be a bigger announcement, but how could you not prepare them in some way? So I told. I’ve never kept a secret very well, and for me, apprehension is the worst part of any crisis. Once you know what the facts are, you can start to move on, change gears, figure out what’s next. Sorta unfair to deny people that option, I thought. Especially since my face said it all already.

So that night, after I got quite drunk, I cried for a long time (as a measure of the times, my biggest weepfests in the last two years have been over jobs, not boys).

And the next morning, I woke up with sadness, but also a sense of relief. Because those last weeks, begging and pleading with AP to for the love of God PAY SOMEONE, getting angry calls from people and vendors who weren’t being paid and were starting to get quite nervous that they never would be, and having to use my own credit card because we were being cut off from photo stock houses and just about everyone else—those weeks near about killed me. Not fun.

The days and weeks and years before, those were fun.

I remember when we were in our temporary offices, a weird spot on the West Side conveniently near the DMV Express, and how I slowly became friends with those people, even though we were separated on two different floors and surrounded by other odd companies also renting temp space.

And then when we graduated to our new spot—all our own—on the East Side, it was like we’d grown up and moved out of our parents’ place. All shiny and new and our own. Of course, the sink in the ladies’ room would be detaching from the wall and there would be holes in ceilings and cigarette burns and pizza stains on the carpet, along with a passel of dead Macs, by the time we left, but hell, we lived.

I had dinner with another former coworker last week and we reminisced over how great we had it at that old company. How collaborative, really, the environment, and how much intelligence and passion there was in that space. How we were all proud of what we did, and how we had fun. (And if we weren’t, well, we probably were letting each other know it.) Fun is something you hear less about these days.

Maybe it sounds idealistic in reflection: You don’t know what you have till it’s gone, or so they say, but I think we did sorta know that we had something special, even if we covered it up with snarky language, ‘tudes, or gossip over whose dog pooped in whose office. Nowhere else I’ve worked has had the same spirit of fighting the good fight, camaraderie, humor, and joy (and ownership, sometimes to excessive degrees) in the process. Nor that respect—even awe—for the ridiculous.

Yes, the office had its share of problems. No one wanted to play by the rules (hell for a managing editor). Every single little bitty thing might turn into an argument. Nothing was “easy.” But we were a family.

And now we’ve split up and gone on to other families that are a little more stable, perhaps, but less exciting, or we’re just loners in the big city making it work on our own. Yes, we talk. We check in. But it’s not the same. I feel in some ways like a completely different person. And I’m sure they do, too.

I’m not sad TK folded, exactly. We were in a bad place at that time and something needed to happen. I wish it could have turned out differently, but there’s no guarantee I’d still be there if it had, and I do keep saying, and truly believe, that change is good. The measure of what I’ve learned in the last two years, through change, is pretty amazing.

But sometimes I think back to that safer time, 2007-2008, and how, although cynical and sarcastic and ever quick with a quip, we were all so innocent. I had no idea that we were on a precipice then, that it was just the start of it all. I had no idea that I might look back a year later after TK’s folding and see that just about every other magazine I might have left for had also folded, or gone through drastic cuts, or was in the process of folding. That my job, as I knew it then, might no longer even exist.

It’s kind of like Final Destination: The Magazine. They’ll get you, wherever you go.

At the same time, weirdly, I don’t feel like it’s the end. There’s something good to come of this. Those people were too talented, too funny, too irrepressible. Our need to do something was too great. There will be more from us, whatever it is. Just you wait.