I'm a Hustla, Baby

Hmm, much as I love Valleywag, there's some factual inaccuracies in the loving tribute posted about me today. It asserts that a Vault.com story says that I was trying to spam people with my resume when I was out of work before joining Six Apart.

But, if you refer to my note at the time, you can see the story's actually from early 2001, well before Six Apart or even Movable Type existed.

The context is kind of important, since this was right after the (first?) dot-com bubble burst and it was a rough time to be in technology in NYC. But a few lean months later I got my job at the Voice and all was well.

As I said in the comments on Valleywag, you're goddamn right I was emailing every person I could about finding a good job. I was also blogging like crazy, writing some of my best stuff. And I was trying to go out and meet new people too, since I really didn't know anybody in the industry. Those tactics might seem old-fashioned now that every kid with a PowerBook thinks he can make something to flip to Yahoo, but I still think they're a good idea if you want to establish yourself. It's only five years later and some anonymous somebody is spending his time searching for my name on Vault instead of finding a better job. There's a lot more I'd like to accomplish before I'd consider myself a success, but I take no small satisfaction in having gone from nowhere to somewhere over the past five years.