How I Landed My 1st Magazine Cover
I got what I felt I didn’t deserve by asking for it.
When I was 10 years old, I was walking home with my nanny and needed to make a quick phone call. There wasn’t a payphone in sight (this was the pre-mobile phone era, dear reader). So we went to a shop nearby and asked to use their phone.
“Sure, that’ll be 25 cents.”
To my extremely naive 10-year-old mind, up to then, I hadn’t assumed everything was always for sale. I learned a valuable lesson then: you should always expect to give something in exchange for something else.
Maybe I was entitled. Maybe I was just naive. Maybe, both or neither and I was just being a typical kid. Regardless, my innocence bubble had burst.
We live in a hustle culture. People don’t have hobbies anymore. Everyone is consumed with their second or third job. Sometimes, even fourth.
We pitch. We sell. We barter. We don’t know how to do anything for anyone else anymore just for the sake of it. Our society has become obsessed with “what’s in it for me?” or “what can I give you if you do this for me?”. As a New Yorker, The Hustle capital of the world, this rings especially true.
We don’t ask for favors anymore because we don’t know how to.
