Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 13 Dreams Die Hard
This blog parses the changes in my middle age and how I went from working as a columnist at a major daily newspaper and a leading cheesemonger to being a beer buyer at a fancy grocery store and how I maintain hope of finding happiness. It’s underpinned by an element of confusion fatigue, frustration fatigue and fatigue fatigue, but it’s about life and downward mobility in New York City 2018, which is never dull.
Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like
Episode 13: Dreams Die Hard
Like a lot of people in media, I was stunned, rattled and deeply saddened by the surprise last week that the New York Daily News was laying off half of its editorial staff. I didn’t work there, nor do I know anyone that does (in the past, I’ve known dozens who did), but rather it was the increasingly loud death knell it represented to the newspaper business and the reminder that one of my most cherished dreams is over.
I began reading newspapers before I began to read really. I was an avid baseball fan from the time I was four or five, and the 1965 National League pennant race enraptured me to the point that I was stealing the sports section just to following the standings, which means I think I knew what Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati meant, though I was completely clueless about my elder’s curmudgeonly insistence on calling the Dodgers “Brooklyn.” By the time I was 12, I had a career goal: write for a newspaper; the people that did got the information first. Yet when I was 30, I won two rounds of interviews at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and both times a decision was made not to hire someone for the position but go with local freelancers. Since I was a local freelancer for New York Newsday, I totally understood; I was reasonably sure that the sum total of my work there, which sometimes was two or even three pieces a week, was a LOT less than what a staffer made. That was as close as I got. I applied for many other spots and often heard that the position was budgeted below my pay grade. Whatever. I can’t complain for a minute about the success I’ve had freelancing and the culinary career I’ve built alongside it. Still, every now and then I think about what life might have been like with a cubicle to call my own, a terminal serviced by in house folks instead of the dudes at the electronics shop around the corner, a group of coworkers who shared my passion for journalism and a steady paycheck plus a 401K and vacations. But those daydreams come to a crashing halt when I realize that it would have been a double-edged sword: on one side, I’d have a pension and buy out money to live on, but on the other, I would never have developed this significant secondary career skill.
I still do journalism and I’m proud of it. One of the most esteemed newspapers in the world enthusiastically publishes my words about ten times a year. I’m not walking away from that. On the other hand, I don’t do it in pursuit of my adolescent dream, I do it because it’s a revenue stream and I desperately need every penny I can find. At least that’s what I tell people, and the reception varies. When one potential Ms. Right heard I was still writing professionally she gave me the same consternated look that she gives 30ish men who cling to dreams of fame and fortune in hip hop or in the NBA.
I think news of layoffs — whether the Daily News recently, ESPN last year, or that most esteemed newspaper in 2016 — would plunge me into emotional realms that code as depression, but I have to achieve some sort of performative conviviality for retail, so I maintain my equilibrium. This job also reflects the dramatic change in the recognition of print journalism. When I worked at Butterfield Market in the late ’90s, I had a few writers for Vogue (yes, ALT was one of them) among the clientele; one of them even came by and showed me my Cassandra Wilson feature before it was out. In 2003, at Garden of Eden, there were several New York Times writers among the regulars and I got a blow by blow account of the demise of Executive Editor Howell Raines. At Bedford Cheese Shop, there were a variety of New Yorker writers who often parsed the difference between the current truckles of Keen’s and Montgomery Cheddar. And lastly on Columbus Avenue, thanks to Jeff Gordinier’s piece, I had a wide variety of media folk stopping by to chat and try cheese. At my current gig, the media influx is fewer and further between for a simple reason; the ranks have thinned. And now these episodes of despair are coupled with an increasingly strong sense of isolation.
In some ways that potential Ms. Right was right in one way. I am still chasing a dream and doing via hopes of having a writing career (albeit in books rather than print journalism), but the dream has diminished considerably. When she and I were dating I envisioned corner desks and cubicles, long vacations to other continents, work related travel to other countries where I could get the scoop that the Jakarta Jazz Festival was now the leading event in Asia or some such. I’d dine in the pool of the leading food critic and chat with chefs about my days as a cheesemonger which would be long in the past.
My days as a cheesemonger are starting to recede into the distant past, and the dreams have diminished considerably. My dream at this point is to pay my rent without the obligation feeling like a pair of cinder blocks on my shoulders. I’d like to travel, but that means a quick run to Boston for a ball game and maybe a visit to a brewery like Trillium or Treehouse. I used to think that cheese would get me to that level. It did, but it was unsustainable. I don’t think craft beer will get me there. I’m too old, too dark and too fat. I do think writing can, even if that route is filled with landmines and torpedoes. Sure, web design might be a surer path, but writing is what I’ve got.
Or maybe it’s got me. Friday night around 10, I was wrapping things up at the store, eager to get out while the rain had let up, when a customer I hadn’t seen in a while crossed my path. He wondered where I’d been hiding. I told him I work only four days a week. I could see in his expression a curiosity about how I make ends meet. I told him of my writing endeavors. He brightened. He told me he wrote regularly for the Soho Weekly News and began to explain what it was (I guess I don’t look like I’m 58). I name dropped a couple of his colleagues and he happily recounted what it was like to write in the mid and late ‘70s.
I let on that I occasionally felt foolish to continue to pursue ambitions of writing in the current media economy, and he almost shouted. “You can’t not do it! If you’re a real writer, you have to write!!”
“What do you think about when you wake up in the morning?” He asked, his eyes flashing with zeal.
The right answer was coffee, but I knew what he meant, and he could tell I knew what he meant and smiled. I gave him a card. He looked at it and admired it for a second. I thought about telling him how easy Vistaprint is, but I didn’t want to interrupt.
“Don’t ever stop,” he said and looked me in the eye a smile creeping across his lips. “Bet you know that already.” He then headed on to do his shopping.
And with that gust of wind in my sails, I finished up and charged into the drizzly night feeling a bit better about the status and root causes of my dreams.
Martin Johnson is a freelance writer whose work on music, sports and culture has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsday, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, The Root, Slate, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications and websites. He also blogs at Rotations, and he can be contacted at thejoyofcheese@gmail.com.
