My Last Week at MBI

Well, I’m done with my office job. My computer system is now my own. No PC!!! I’ll be working on my Macintosh! I hate PCs! I love my Mac. 'Nuff said.
It would have been much easier to leave if I had a lousy job filling out TPS reports or some such nonsense, but I’ve spent 12 years being involved with something I enjoy--making books. Yes, there is corporate B.S., but that’s to be found at every company. So I'll miss the buzz of puttiing together a good book, the strategizing over look and feel, but I've done enough of that for one lifetime and I'll be doing my favorite part of that--making the words and the photos--so that I can let go of easily enough. Mostly I'll miss the interaction--the tired old jokes with Dennis and Josh, hearing Darwin rant, Jim's addled babble, and so on. So leaving was not necessarily easy, and it took me a while to (as a friend of mine said) “Go over the wall.”
I had a great last week, being treated to lunches, flying a blimp in the building, saying goodbye to everyone, and drinking beer in the office. As I told the CEO, if the job was all beer drinking and blimp flying, I’d never quit.
Good fun, but now it's time to live my dream of becoming an independent contractor. At the moment, I have two Macs up and running (my desktop and my laptop), Science Friday on MPR on the radio, a warm cup of coffee to drink, some home-baked cookies to snack on, shoots of tractors and garages to schedule, and a proposal to send off. Nothin' wrong with that.

The Naked Scot Rides!

Camera Geek Bidding

My final missing piece of equipment is a higher-resolution digital camera. I’ve been shooting with a 10D for nearly three years now. Tho I initially didn’t like using digital—the saturation of the images wasn’t up to what I was used to from Fuji film—I’ve come to really appreciate the advantages. In fact, I now prefer digital.

For shooting calendars and opening spreads in a larger-format book, the 10D’s 6-megapixel images are not up to the task, plus my 10D is starting to show signs of age (missing autofocus shots, and misfiring when used with my 70-200), so it’s time for an upgrade. I wanted a full-frame camera, so I had the Canon 1DS Mark 1 and the Canon 5D to choose from. I went over the specs at length. The 5D has more options when it comes to color adjustment, can be set to ISO 3200, and has a larger LCD. Plus it uses the same battery as my 10D, which means I would have two chargers and some extra batteries right away. But it doesn’t have the heavy-duty environmental seals of the 1DS. And I simply love the way the Canon D bodies feel in your hand.

So I’m bidding on eBay on bodies. It’s become a bit of an obsession with me. I missed what I thought was a perfect one last night. It was here in the Twin Cities area, in perfect condition, and came with a transferable extended warranty. I bid a bit higher than I thought was necessary, and some guy from Indonesia outbid me!

Ah well, I’ve found another one and used the “Buy It Now" feature. The hunt is fun, but I'm ready to get the equipment here and put it to work!

The Rock Dam Ride

I spent some time visiting with an ATV club in Wisconsin on Saturday. A great group of people. They are doing a lot of good things for their community, and were a nice bunch.

I posted my favorite photo from the ride. I shot it over a woman's shoulder as she rode down the trail.

A couple of notes came up. First, I need to use my tape recorder more often. I have trouble getting quotes down in notes, especially in these situations where time is tight and lots of different people are talking to me at once.

I also think that having an assistant would be a huge help. I’d like someone to take some shots while I’m interviewing people, and get additional names and quotes from people in the club.

The Price of Time

Two weeks showed up in the mail on Friday, a check from one of my magazine clients. The fact that the check was long overdue was besides the point—money these days is time.

I know about what I need to survive each month, and each check represents a little piece of time. Enough pieces of time, and I can take some time off to relax. I don’t imagine that will be happening for a while, honestly.

So I keep a spreadsheet with assignments, and I have enough assignments to survive about six months. Not necessarily thrive, but it’s all about survival right now. And those little assignments of time mean I’ll be doing this for six months. That’s good.

I’ve been reading Mike Perry’s Handbook to Freelance Writing, and a passage of Mike’s that stuck with me states that he’s always six months away from a desk job. I guess he sees money as freedom as well as time.

Freedom. That concept is just starting to sink in, possibly beginning last week when I realized that I had enough work in the hopper to feel like this may actually work.

The CEO at MBI was concerned about the long lead time between the time I made this decision and the time I left. I wanted time to get some contracts signed and preparations made, and my boss wanted me to sort out some of my projects before I left, so we managed to convince the CEO to be patient.

While the time has been good in terms of getting some things lined up, the wait has been hard. There’s nothing worse than knowing something hard is coming that you don’t quite know how to deal with, and not having much time to do anything about it.

So it has been a long fall, with too much time to worry and too little to work.

Happily, however, the wait is nearly over, and I find my mind turning to finding a market for a Kodiak Island ride and weighing whether it is worth writing a sample chapter on spec rather than comparing health insurance plans and figuring out how to manage 401K plans. A welcome change.

I’m looking forward to the day when marketing concerns turn to crafting phrases and choosing f-stops.

The Grip!

Well, I've had a fairly eventful week. I spoke with a man who was in Ford racing management for the past 20 years or so who is interested in teaming up to write his story. An amazing guy--very outspoken and honest--I believe his story is worth telling and would make a great project. Also had several book ideas proposed, and one was shot down, one was accepted, and one was tabled for more discussion in December, so that's pretty positive. Nice to have some work coming over the transom.
All this during a Thanksgiving week in which I was sick as a dog--I've got the world's nastiest flu! Well, back to a cup of tea and a little rest for my immune system. G'night!

My Favorite Photo from the Heitzman Wedding

I was putting together a book of photos for a friend of mine whose wedding I photographed last spring, and came across this shot in the black and white film. I'm really happy with the shot--it's a got a feel I really like--so I'm tossing it up here. Enjoy.

Filin' a Story and Listening to Wilco

Nearly 70 degrees today in Minnesota, and I spent a little time on the bike riding to work today. Made me look forward to days when I can just slip out mid-day for a ride (like that'll happen, but it's a nice thought). Jeff Tweedy is singing Passenger Side, and I've got another story in the bank. Sent a piece in to ATV Rider today about riding with a club in Northern California. The star of that show was Verna, a woman in her 70s who rode with us up in the hills above Placerville. She drove a black Hemi Dodge 4x4 and had a great attitude, smiling through a face full of dirt at the end of the day. Great to get a story in the bank, and to find time to work on my new endeavor. Also did my last sales presentation at the publishing company today, and surprised myself with the fact that I'll miss that. I like getting in front of the sales crew and getting them jacked up to sell books I believe in. This one is an off-road guide done with Ivan Stewart, a great little book that I think people will really enjoy.

I attached a photo of Verna, and am enjoying myself a Blue Moon before heading in to check in on how the Dems are doing in their bid to regain some control in this goofy country of ours. G'night.

Moving Along

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I started this blog, so I figure it's time for an update. One of my primary tasks is finding a market to pick up some of the stories I wrote for Escape, the magazine that went belly-up in such a timely fashion the SAME week I decided to go freelance.

After a rough week marked by sleeplessness and a long day sitting at my desk thinking, oh shit, I'm going to be living in a cardboard box a year from now, begging for handouts on the street, I made a little progress on making this screwball dream a reality.

I managed to place one and maybe two of my stories written for the now-dead Escape with Motorcyclist, which is positive. That magazine has a much bigger circulation, so I'll get a bit more exposure. I have two others to sell, and pitched variations of one about a ride with enduro legend Dick Burleson to Men's Health and AARP (insert age joke here--the second is not about ME but about Dick, who's 58 and still living life at full-throttle, to say the least).

Oh, and I also put together a portfolio using the "book" feature in iPhoto. What an amazing program--I did that in about three hours and it looks great. So I've got something to show--now I just need plenty of people to show it to!

One of the best things was having some of my vague notions about what kind of books I want to write forming into more concrete ideas. I think profiles of people who are finding ways to live that are satisfying and creative and outside of mainstream America are interesting, and would be interesting to this homogenized world we live in, but was struggling to find a way to make a book out of that notion. Then I started thinking about the common threads in two innovative, creative people I met while working on books, and realized that both of them built amazing businesses and things in their garage, and thought there's probably a book of profiles and stories about people creating amazing things out of their garage. My publisher, Zack, really likes that idea, and we hammered out a book idea around that this morning.

So that's a big plus this week, another small step in the right direction.

Other than that, life is proceeding normally which means, as of late, a lot of work. I teach and spent the evening refining my class plan. The students are bright and interesting, and the college (Minnesota College of Art and Design) is a place that feels much more hopeful and upbeat than the publishing company where I work (for now). I suppose there's a needed dose of reality at the publishing house, but I like the youthful energy of a college. It's a place where anything seems possible.

First Steps . . .

OK, the first step in this thing came from Zack Miller, the VP of Publishing at MBI. We went to college together, and have worked together for a long time now. More than 12 years. He's a friend, and my boss.

We have coffee each week, and he said that he thought it was time for me to pursue my dream, and that he'd support me as a publisher. That kind of support from what will be one of my primary clients is terrific, and was just the push I needed to jump off into the void.

Things are pretty quiet about this right now. I've told a few friends, and the CEO at MBI knows (even came up to congratulate me during a quiet moment at the company car show last Saturday). The rest of the company doesn't know yet, so it's not on the radar screen there.

I did tell an old friend, Sam Wheeler, and his whole family called and said "Congratulations." He's one of those who've been urging me to do this, and the message was really nice.

So I'm working on a list of books to take on, and on drumming up some more magazine clients. One of my primary clients, Motorcycle Escape magazine, went belly up this week (of course). That's a drag, but just points out the fact that I need some venues with more readers (and bigger budgets) anyway.

So I'm researching magazines, looking for a couple of good homes for my debaucherous adventures. Know any magazines interested in stories about motorcycle-riding nutbags cut loose in exotic destinations? Send 'em my way . . .

Starting Out

I've been talking about freelancing since, well, it's been so long I can't remember when I started. Probably shortly after I decided to drop out of engineering school (OK, maybe I was flunking out . . . details) back in 1989. I was talking about freelancing in 1993, and seriously talking about it in 2000.

So I'm finally taking the plunge and this blog will be where I'll air out the progress of chasing my dreams.