Sorting through my magazine life.
The recycle pile.
Over the last week, I’ve been sorting through my 20-year career in magazine publishing. I’ve written countless editor’s notes, features and columns. I’ve been the editor of six different magazines and created so many years’ worth of editorial calendars, budgets and business plans. I’ve planned and managed conferences and photo shoots, given keynote speeches, served on panel discussions.
I’m sounding rather nostalgic, aren’t I? It’s because I’ve been reminded of all this thanks to organizing files and boxes and boxes of magazines. Looking at all this reminds me of how much I love magazines and also how much I need to get with the times. The stuff I write now, of course, is all on line. But not so very long ago, it wasn’t. So I have a LOT of actual magazines with my work in it. Too many, really, for someone who has been moving as much as we have the last two years.
Which brings me to what I’ve been up to: I have been downsizing my collection of magazines. It’s been hard because so much of my career can be found in those actual pages. When I used to describe what my editor role was, I liked to respond: I am responsible for everything in the magazine that’s not an ad. I guess you could say that I was invested in those pages.
Many years ago, I preserved a good portion of my US publications by having them bound into volumes. But the more recent ones have been stored in stand-up file folders. I went through them and forced myself to keep just one copy of each. And I used a utility knife to tear out some of my particular favorite articles. My goal is to get all these editor’s notes and features scanned so that I have them in a more permanent form. But seeing the piles accumulate on my office floor, I found myself with this curious combination of pride at what I had created, but also sadness that I was letting it go.
{ 4 comments }
Hi Sandra, like you I was a magazine collector. I still have a fairly massive collection of The Face, the famous UK magazine. I’ve been downsizing lately and it’s the magazines which have been the first to go. Unlike you, the product of my career has been, seemingly, more ephemeral. Nonetheless, I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of audio in various formats. I’m backing up as much as possible online, which is also allowing me to revisit some of the material. It’s a nice thing to be able to go back and reflect on some of your previous work. I hope you’re enjoying it. James
You can’t keep everything and it sounds like you have a good method. I find I never miss the stuff I get rid of.
Thanks antropologa. That’s a really good point. We definitely have too much stuff!
Thanks for sharing that James. It’s cool that you have the audio to listen to – how fun. I would love to hear my voice and how it’s changed over the years of my career! As for my work, I definitely found myself reading different articles I’d written and thinking, not bad! It was fun.
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