Gift Horse, Mouth, etc.

I can still remember, oddly, the circumstances in which I got invited to join THR. Perhaps this shouldn’t be so surprising, but my famously shitty memory plays a significant role here; I can’t remember where I was when I first was brought onto Wired or Time or almost anywhere else I’ve ever worked; I have a vague recollection of what happened when I was asked to be a full time staffer on io9, but that’s mostly because it happened during a meal where the food wasn’t particularly good. The memory, it works in strange ways, I guess.

Nonetheless, I can remember what happened with THR with unusual clarity. I was back in the UK for my nephew’s christening — I was (am) his godfather, so it was a big deal for me — and it was a strange, somewhat surreal trip for me. It was the first time I’d been there since my father’s death, and that alone made the whole thing feel different; that I was staying with one of my sisters and keeping odd hours because I was still working on Pacific time during the whole thing just added to the strangeness. I’d be awake while everyone else slept, typing away and struggling with WiFi that seemed almost archaic in how bad it was, and how often it would cut out.

The first email I got was a polite, would you be interested from Marc Bernardin, who I knew through Meredith Woerner at io9, and I remember the sense of excitement and disbelief I got from it — it sounded far too good to be true, especially considering the way the gig was described, and I was partially convinced it was either a mistake or a joke. I said yes, of course, because I knew better than to do otherwise. I was convinced that, at the worst, it was flattering to be asked, and I might get a good story out of it. Even if I got the job, I told myself, I’d probably only last two years or so.

That was eight years ago.

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