The last time I blew my career up was in 2017.
When 2017 started, I had been working as a reporter for Fast Company magazine for six-and-a-half years or so. I was covering a lot of emerging technology stories (biotech, autonomous vehicles, AI, that kind of thing) and was based in Los Angeles. My work for Fast Company was supplemented by steady freelance work doing things like writing op-eds for the Los Angeles Times, writing for other magazines and taking the occasional corporate gig here and there.
I was also restless. I had developed a book proposal with an agent1 that was straying far from the original book concept and deep into the woods of I-don’t-want-to-spend-the-next-year-writing-this. My journalism career had stalled. Readers and my editors loved my work, but there were limited growth opportunities at my own publication and getting a job at a rival publication would have required moving back to New York or, worse yet, to the Bay Area2.
I n…
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