There will be no cliffhangers here: A couple weeks ago, I resigned from my job at the Washington Post, and as of mid-April, I’ll be trying to make my way as a freelance writer, focusing on food writing. Today, I’m sharing a bit about why I decided to blow up my career.
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Late last summer, I scattered arugula seeds in the raised bed in my front yard. It was dusk, and a story was waiting to be edited on my computer screen inside the house. The mosquitoes, which wouldn’t die out until November, were ravenous, so I made quick work of it, and I knew I wasn’t following any of the instructions on the back of the packet. I hadn’t buried the seeds deep enough or spaced them out properly. Oh well, I thought. We’ll see what happens.
By then, I knew I needed a career change. I’d started this newsletter and ordered a massive stack of food writing books. I’d begun the complicated process of baking my own wedding cakes, and I’d started to experiment with recipe development. I’d battled tomato plants in a frenzied growth spurt and coaxed snap peas up a trellis on my patio. I wanted to write and cook and bake and write about cooking and baking.
Problem was, my job involved none of those things. I was the NFL editor at the Washington Post, which means I had a great gig at a time when there are fewer and fewer great gigs left in journalism. A few more problems: I’m too much of a people-pleaser to be a good manager. I’m too type-A to let a message sit unanswered for more than 12.5 seconds. And when you’re an editor with some level of power at a massive newspaper, you get a lot of messages.
I’m not sure what came first. Did I decide I wanted to write about food? Or did I realize being a sports editor was a bad fit for my personality? Chicken, egg — and I just wanted to write about the chicken and the egg, about sustainable farming and the best methods of scrambling.
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