Gambling
Thursday, April 5th, 2007
This week’s question:
So that was March—what’s the Maddest gamble you ever made? Did it pay off?
Next week’s question:
April fools! What’s the most successful prank you ever played?
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My biggest gamble–quitting grad school to start a zine. I was going to Cornell and I hated it. One weekend I took the bus to NYC to see the Flaming Lips. They were playing at a tiny club in the Village, hardly anyone was there. They were so fucking amazing that I was like, why am I writing about dead artists, when I could be writing about this? I quit my program the next day, moved to LA at the end of the semester, and had an issue of Ben is Dead out by the end of the year.
Every mad gamble I’ve made has come from being madly in love. Clichéd but true— I gave up my apartment, bought a car, and drove to another city with a ring in my pocket. She said yes (could you refuse an exhausted, rumpled sap fresh off a 20-hour drive?). This would be a better story if we’d ever gone through with the wedding and I could tell you about our 2.5 perfect children and our big yellow dog. Still it’s hard to regret that sort of youthful insanity. At least I don’t wonder what might have been. Not too much anyway.
When I got my current job, I had already been offered a position at another company. I was being stolen away by a second company. I knew I had leverage, but when the second company asked how much I was being offered at the first, I lied. By about $5k. So not only did Company #2 match Company #1’s fictitious offer, but they beat it. By an additional $5k, or about $10k more than my first offer. So I suppose that in itself was a gamble, but here’s my maddest gamble–and by maddest, I mean, actually crazy, based on potential reward versus possible risk–for the possibility of having this published, I risk having someone at my company find out.
I’m sure this will make some people want to blow up my apartment or something, but it felt like a gamble to keep my baby. Young, single, pro-choice, and accidentally pregnant, I definitely felt I had a decision to make. Twenty-one months later, obviously, I can’t imagine my life without her. My family and friends have been amazing, my finances have held out so far, and men don’t even seem as terrified as I’d been warned. But here come the terrible twos…
In October 2005, the same week I started working for a weekly publication as a non-reporter, my new full-time employer’s biggest competitor in a pretty small market published a front-page feature article I submitted as a freelancer three months before. In January 2006, while I was putting together contest submissions as part of my employment, I also put together and paid with my own money for a couple of my own submissions I wrote for the competitor–a couple of my coworkers entered in the same categories I did and I knew it, because I filled out their paperwork (but used the editors for contact names). The gamble paid off when I won first place for non-deadline reporting for a non-daily newspaper. I just learned that I’ve won another award in this year’s contest–only now I’m working at a third, unrelated publication and the award is for an article I wrote for my current employer so I don’t feel like a need to hide it. Use my real name.
Awww so romantic. Stay true, Louis!