💨 Read this book

This week I want to encourage you to read Doc Watson: A life in music by Eddie Huffman. I'm about halfway through it, and I appreciate the fast-track education into someone whose music I know but whose person I do not. If you're the type of person who will appreciate the music more if you know the story behind it — whether you're spinning a Doc Watson record or run into a cover at a Billy Strings show — this one is for you.

I bought it online at Malaprop's in Asheville, where Brakeman attended a book signing and subsequently "put me on" to this blesséd literature. Thank you, Brakeman! (If there are any typos in here, it's because he didn't read it.)

Anyway, from Doc Watson's very interesting and actually difficult-yet-triumphant life from the mountains to Carnegie Hall (where I just saw Gillian Welch & David Rawlings last week — another Brakeman rec!) to my own saga, which is way less interesting and way more air-conditioned, I just wanna say yeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh!

I've never been out of work without more work lined up before, and I'm way busier than I imagined I'd be. I thought I'd have to confidence to sit back with severance money and take my caboose to the MET on a random Wednesday afternoon, but so far I've had too much nervous energy to truly chill. Everyone deals with stress differently, and my default is without a doubt keeping myself at a go-go-go-go-go-go kind of pace. This coping mechanism is not without its flaws – as no coping mechanism is! – and I know I do need to take a step back and breathe, or I'll crash into a wall. Many such cases.

As I'm getting my "seeking new opportunities" sea legs and winding down at the employer that's taking me out back behind the barn, I'm trying to cook up a little two-person agency with an old colleague. (Is "Necessary Evil" an awful name for a marketing agency, or just awful enough? Let me know...) We had our first "official pitch meeting" today, and it seemed to go pretty well. We'll need about five or six of them to go really well, if we want to pay the bills! Stay tuned, if I decide to keep treating Smokestack as an unemployment journal. Speaking of, I know it's a hard time for a lot of businesses right now, and I'm certainly not the only one in a tough situation right now. If this is you, I feel you and I'm rooting for you.

Once again I am letting you know that I'm still figuring out where Train Songz memes and zines fit in this unemployed world. Once again I am promising you that they're not going anywhere — I need to figure out a good, healthy way to block out time for it, because it makes me happy! I genuinely love it. In the punch-in-the-face wakeup of a layoff, though, it's easy to spin your wheels for nine hours a day (go-go-go-go-go-go) on things that feel more productive than your silly meme-zine baby. I'm refreshing LinkedIn like its Hinge right now. It's awful. Please keep that between us. Anyway, more to come here... thanks for sticking with me.

I'll close with this: as fate would have it, one person we met with today was a big bluegrass fan, clocked my resume, and wanted to see the zine. Maybe spending time on this old thing and finding gainful employment ain't mutually exclusive, after all... Feels like a small sign that the thing you make for joy might just open a door. (Go off, Dr. Seuss.)