Overnight Success
How to get rich. Eventually.
Last night, I saw X at the Paramount Theater here in Austin.
I’ve seen X a lot of times. Take them for granted, probably.
But watching them on stage, the lot of them pushing 70 or over that hump – Billy Zoom is 76. He played with Gene Vincent.
What the hell am I crying about?
Aging doesn’t just come with aches, pains, weird hairs and complaints, it comes with responsibility.
You either grow into who you are, you find deeper connection with your intentional self (I swear to GOD I am not going to start talking like this), or you give up. You die. You drink yourself into an early grave. Not even an early one. A grave.
John Doe once told me that he was feeling like his voice was finding a new grounding, a deeper connection
He’s 70 and he’s still discovering parts of himself that he hadn’t accessed. Or realized. Or simply not yet attained.
I find that so encouraging and maddening at the same time.
Encouraging obviously. Maddening because it simply points to the obvious – keep doing the work.
There is no resting on laurels.*
There is accepting and honoring your achievements. There is believing that your contributions to the world have value and you’ve done your best, hopefully.
But the work persists. Keep writing. Keep digging that ditch. Keep building new things.
Keep getting on stage, and playing punk rock like your life depends on it.
Because it does.
I started this Substack because I found myself in a situation again, where a company that I’d poured a lot of myself into, suddenly went away.
I honestly knew it was coming. The founder hadn’t hid from any of us that there wasn’t a lot of runway left in it, in him, in us.
The weekend leading up to it, I told Rose, “He’s going to shut it down.” I knew. You usually do know.
Other companies, the layoffs were coming for months. Sometimes you lay off half your team, not knowing that your name is on the list too. That’s fun.
Looking back, all of these things make sense. I harbor no ill will to any of them.
Well, fuck that juice company. But that is fodder for another piece entirely.
(You know the company is in trouble when the investor accidentally sexts you. I can’t say who he was trying to sext. But it wasn’t pretty. He’s in prison now.)
So yeah, no ill will. Like I keep saying, I’ve been on both sides. I know how hard it is to hire. I know how hard it is to fire.
And thus you just keep moving forward. I’m doing a bunch of consulting now. That has its own travails. Mostly about not quadruple booking yourself.
And you don’t always know where the next paycheck is coming from. Whenever I read about Agile product development, I always sorta laugh. There’s nothing agile about a daily consistent meeting and process.
Try figuring out where your next can of Hormel Chili is coming from when your contracts dry up and it’s Friday afternoon. That’s Agile.
It can feel too often like the system is gamed. Like some folks know the rules and the rest of us, by virtue of how we were raised or not having the birthright or some other arcane magic consideration are just trundling along in blithe ignorance.
Like The Matrix, but shittier.
How do you keep going when it seems like it’s a gamed system and you don’t even know the rules?
I remember once there was a nightclub and music venue in San Francisco called 12 Galaxies. There were a couple good dudes who ran it, Adam and Robert. They tried their hardest to manifest it as a competitive club with solid booking but repeatedly, Adam told me, they’d lose an offer to another club.
Adam said there was a conspiracy, a secret group of the insiders who ran the top clubs in town. A consortium to which he was not invited.
I asked another club owner who was in this fabled group about it. I lived by this particular club, Café duNord. I DJ’d there, went to their Christmas parties. I was inside, man.
I told him what Adam said and asked if there was a secret group that met to decide who got what.
“That’s crazy,” he said. “There’s no secret consortium. I mean, yeah, we meet every month and talk about what we’re doing” he trailed off. “I mean I guess yeah. Haha.” He laughed.
The game is rigged! The house always wins! The odds are against you.
Just ask Frank Chu, the sign bearer behind the name 12 Galaxies.
There is such a thing as a meritocracy. Just sometimes you gotta pay the entrance fee too.
Look, X is my favorite band . I can count on one hand the number of acts who are still together after nearly 50 years. That’s an astonishing show of perseverance. And people still want to see them! The show was sold out.
You do good work. But you have to keep working
The age of retirement used to be 55. My dad retired at 50. Early buyout plan for government employees thanks to Clinton. My dad hated his job. Government accountant for 30 years. Proud army vet before that. Hated that job but never missed a day. I think he took two sick days in 30 years.
I take off work if I have a questionable rash.
My dad has never been as happy as he’s been in retirement. Different man.
But that’s not the path that I took. And I’m gonna pay for it.
But I also worked with musicians I loved. I invented things out of whole cloth. I didn’t get rich but I wouldn’t trade places with my dad. Even if he had to bail me out a few times. Thanks Dad!
I do wish the accounting had rubbed off on me. Especially around tax time
I get this particular rush when I’m writing these things. I used to think, like the cliché says, writers hate writing but they love having written. I’m finding that’s not true for me anymore.
Especially when the concept for a piece comes together. When inspiration hits.
Of course it usually hits after about 8 or 9 attempted starts. Half essays. Finished pieces that just didn’t gel. Or that sucked altogether.
I’m finding more and more that the creativity, the digging into new things and new ideas, the Range I talked about a few issues ago, the hours spent uncovering – either learning how to fix your Wordpress site or wrangling your brain through an inordinate amount of grief to try to find some deeper truth.
This work is worth it. Even when there’s not an immediate paycheck at the end of it.
I just looked up who said “Do the work,” because I know it’s out there in the zeitgeist. Apparently it was marketing guru Seth Godin’s idea.
Good, now I want to punch myself in the neck.
Whatever, do the work. Keep on digging. Don’t fall prey to the bottle, or the video game, or the afternoon nap or the conspiracy fears or just the feeling that the house is against you, that the game is rigged. Keep it up.
But put your ass on the line, and put your back into it. It’s worth it.
You’re reading Are You Experienced, a newsletter about finding career and purpose after 50. I’m Nick Tangborn and I’ve done a lot of stuff over my career, from pancake batter to inventing video streaming technology, from spearheading an online encyclopedia of music to hawking cold-pressed green juice that tasted like that smell your refrigerator gets when you get back from a long trip.
If you’re a subscriber, my eternal thanks, you are doing god’s work. If not, what are you waiting for?
Here’s John Doe, from X, from the aforementioned 12 Galaxies, doing “Here Comes A Regular” from a Replacements tribute I produced years ago.
*Because I am 12, I can never hear the word “Laurel” without thinking of the joke in Blazing Saddles, “I present to you, a laurel, and hearty handshake.”
Another ace piece here. And now I kinda miss Frank Chu.
That 'Mats tribute gig at 12 Galaxies was, in Westerbergian parlance, fuckin great.
Loving these Nick! Your struggles in that cutthroat component of the corporate world come down to one thing- you care too much about people