They told me to put my thesis statement in the first sentence.
It’s been a little over three months since my contract officially ended at a large international law firm. As much as I complained about the work, it was a job that suited my sensibilities in many ways. It was a large, conservative company without anything resembling hustle culture, where they had little interest in asking me to do anything beyond my responsibilities as outlined in my contract. I was expected, simply, to put in the hours and write and edit what I was assigned to write and edit, and indeed, if I showed initiative, there was a decent chance that I would be reprimanded for doing so. Meetings were few, and work post-2020 was largely remote, allowing me to spend inordinate amounts of time in odd locations. While there was a natural tedium, I drove my lane well because I can’t personally countenance the idea of not doing something to the best of my ability. And I managed, somehow, to earn a respectable middle-class salary (for the US), and a solidly upper middle-class salary (for Thailand), for a job I had the luxury to not think about at all between about 5:00 p.m. on Friday and 8:00 a.m. on Monday. One which enabled me to pursue more creative projects off (or even on) the clock.
But then my department was liquidated, and I was sent into the street wearing a barrel with straps over the shoulders. I stared at the spot where my work laptop used to be.
A look at the local job boards didn’t give me much to wish for. I knew I’d have to take a pay cut… but Christ. First off, the extra paperwork and extra cost associated with hiring a foreigner is far more than most local enterprises are willing to deal with. Second, good lord it’s so abysmal how little the average Thai office worker gets paid. Just to give you an idea, and I can say this because they put this on a public job board, so fuck ‘em, GQ Thailand was hiring a new editor-in-chief. Starting pay, 60,000 baht per month. That’s right, USD 21k a year for the fucking editor in chief of GQ.
So that leaves remote work. Pickings are also slim, with WFH representing less than 10 percent of all jobs now (down from 20 percent a few years ago). However, I had a few preexisting freelance connects, and they have paid (and continue to pay) dividends. I decided to see where that took me. One thing led to another. I started finding new contracts. And more new contracts.
And then I realized… fuck, I’m making a living writing about food and travel, for a host of prestige and not-so-prestige publications that I will leave nameless here, lest they also decide to cast me out wearing a barrel with straps. Although in their case, it would at least be a premium French barrique.
This is where people I meet have a tendency to ooh and aah. They shouldn’t. Someone once told me “you said [insert name of fancypants publication] so fucking nonchalantly.” Yeah, I did. Because while it’s an important publication (there are valid arguments against it, but that’s a whole other conversation), it’s a job.
As I’m at pains to tell them, I promise, it’s not half as glamorous as it sounds. You think we’re swanning around eating complimentary Michelin star dinners and exchanging witty banter with David Chang and Alain Ducasse? You think my life reeks of truffles and Yquem, as M.F.K. Fisher once described a certain kind of food writer?
Before I say some pretty harsh things, I should say this, in appreciation. I love food, and I love writing. And I love chefs, and the best chefs are just the coolest people to hang out with, and when chefs like my work, I care about that far, far more than I care about my peers’ opinion. I love the enthusiasm of mid-tier chefs on the way up, honing their vision. I love the photographer I work with the most, a painfully shy blue-blood who knows how to find riots of color and form in the most unexpected places. I love the feeling of constant exploration and adventure. Even if that whale tartare was a bit underwhelming, I’m glad I had it.
But – shit talk time – here’s what it’s actually like in the trenches. You write about places you’ve never been to. You write about restaurants you’ve never eaten at, that you could never afford to eat at. Top-tier restaurants that are charging like 300 dollars a person, before drink, who are interested in chasing the whales, the corporate clients and wealthy tourists that dgaf, those awful culinary starfuckers who have foolishly conflated expenditure and quality and need the social-media snap of their World’s 50 Best meal. You might go to the restaurant to interview the chef, but chances are high that you’re lucky just to get a cup of coffee out of them, and at the highest of the high-end, a lot of chefs are the cantankerous jackasses you imagine. You try to correspond with your editor, and I’ve had both excellent and awful editors. You have a few Scotches, and send off what you’ve got, praying it doesn’t suck as bad as you fear it does. Chances are, your work that you slaved over disappears into the torrent of “content.” A truly disgusting word.
To that end, I hear from plenty of the people, many of them well-meaning and supportive who tell me that no one reads anymore, that people get their information from TikTok and Reels nowadays (not they themselves, of course, they are among the elect), but, y’know, the hoi polloi.
And while I find their holier-than-thou attitude a bit icky, even if it comes from the right place, there’s a truth to it. A coffee shop in my neighborhood now plays AI-generated short-form videos of AI influencers using that hideous AI TikTok voiceover voice to extol their coffee and ice cream in an AI Lumphini Park, and it makes me want to not-AI kill myself. The very kind older homosexual who runs the shop somehow tolerates this bullshit in his place of business, but I guess he’s made of tougher stuff than I.
But the thing is, and what these interlocutors get wrong, is that we’re all fucking fried by the internet, over whelmed by the infinitude of content (a “jest” that is somehow “infinite,” if you will…), by the prioritization of the brief and flashy over the slow and nuanced, myself included. This because it’s not like you can free yourself. The diseases that afflict the present writing world – branded content and automation – are present at all levels. When I’ve applied for jobs with legacy media organizations, they’ve told me that I am not only allowed but expected to use AI – presumably a decision made downstream from their private-equity paymasters. And yet when I see job postings from independent bloggers, clickbait websites, startup apps, and all the most ephemeral media of our present moment, they’re fully cognizant that AI prose gives people the ick hard, and politely say… write your own shit, you fuckers.
And, indeed, now that I’m lacking the structure of wage labor, I’m free to press the dopamine button as much as I want without any immediate consequences. Like countless prose stylists before me, I am plagued by the temptation to seek the muse in a bottle of Woodford. And so, if I don’t restrain myself suitably, I can imbibe whatever cocktail of substances I want, pass out at some point, wake up in a golden haze and stumble over to my laptop.
Furthermore, there is work to be done, but there are so many other distractions present, and it doesn’t help that they are right fucking there on the same fucking device I use to do my work. Article after article, streaming video, rabbit holes to go down, messages from people I know, side projects to pursue, and of course flesh crashing into flesh. Whether or not one is actually looking at pornography, the individual online and without direction is gooning in some way or another, to an unrealizable fantasy, in whatever form it may take.
Yet somehow, I muddle through. I pay my bills. I receive nice notes from my editors. I don’t know how the fuck I’m doing this.
I’m sure – I can’t even bear to look for it – there are countless Youtube tutorials on how to do the writing hustle. Countless Instagram stories. People who treat writing the same way as they treat forex trading or drop-shipping or crypto or AI slop production, which is to say an updated pyramid scheme, whereby the promoters of the hustle get paid far more than the ostensible hustlers. They will have flashy infographics telling you what goals to set, what returns to expect, how to make sick connects.
My way of doing things? I choose to do everything wrong. I don’t spread awareness on social media, I hide out in weird corners spitting and snarling. I don’t network, but I do have the great fortune to get drunk with the right people and I can be terribly charming if required – if an old woman orders a glass of Bollinger, tell her that you can always trust a lady who drinks Bollinger. I refused to pursue post-graduate education (which from a personal finance perspective, at least, was probably doing everything right). I stayed at home and read books instead of going out to events. I could never bear to flatter the right people. I could never bear to lie and deceive and scam, as much as I saw how the liars and deceivers and scammers in my orbit were being rewarded for their foul behavior, even as they hid behind a veil of tartuferie. I screamed and sneered, and to be quite frank, while I spent significant amounts of time treating the world like my personal ashtray, I ensured that all destructive capabilities were directed inwards rather than outwards, even as I saw many truly awful people in my orbit thrive and prosper. Many of them thrive and prosper still, and are far wealthier and probably happier than I. I think about them as I step outside the gallery where the event is being held, and wonder if I’ve got another weed gummy in my blazer pocket.
Don stepped outside
It felt good to be alone
He wished he was drunk
He thought about something he just said
And how stupid it had sounded
He knew he should forget about it
And he decided to piss, but he couldn’t
A plane passed silently overhead
The streetlights, and the buds on the trees and the night
Were still.
- as recorded in Louisville, 1990
But then, in the morning, I wake up to the birds outside. And yes, I’m dancing on a knife’s edge. But fuck… somehow, I’m still dancing.
