This particular newsletter you’re seeing usually appears on Fridays, but I got busy last week, so hopefully you don’t mind this Monday version!
When I was 13, I wanted to grow up to be Andie Anderson, How-To Girl: cute and funny, living in New York City while writing for a fun girly-pop magazine before transitioning to more serious journalism, and eventually falling for a really cute guy that looks like Matthew McConauaghey (Author’s note: This was back in what I affectionately call my Straight Era, AKA anytime before the age of 29 when I didn’t know I was gay).
I guess you could argue that bits and pieces of that came true—I lived in NYC for awhile, and even met my partner there.
I did not, however, have the writing career I always dreamed of having, the ones promised on the silver screen.
Fewer people love romantic comedies more than I do, but even I can acknowledge the way they sell unrealistic expectations about meet-cutes and falling in love. However, I don’t particularly find this to be an issue because I don’t (usually) watch movies or television for a slice of real life. I watch them to escape.
Another element of storytelling that romcoms are good at? Showcasing careers in media and journalism that are damn near impossible to make a decent living at today.
My writing career thus far has been living proof of that.
After leaving Los Angeles and saying goodbye to a potential future in screenwriting, my first real journalism job came as a part-time writer—and then a few months later as an assistant lifestyle editor—at my local hometown newspaper in 2014. To this day, it’s my favorite job I’ve ever had, and I wrote some fun stuff while doing it.
But I made peanuts there. Even with a low cost of living, I still needed to take on a second job on the weekends to supplement my assistant editor salary, which came in at a measly $9 an hour—before taxes and health insurance were taken out.
After about a year and a half, I left it for brighter and greener pastures in Nashville, with a startup women’s lifestyle site, Womanista—probably the closest I ever came to working at Andie Anderson’s Composure magazine.
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At Womanista, I worked with an incredible and supportive group of women, many of whom I’m still lucky enough to call my friends. But naturally—after the site was purchased from the woman who started it all—it was managed by a millionaire frat bro d-bag and became clickbait garbage before it merged with its sister site, another clickbait trash site that still exists today. Many of my friends were slowly picked off—either let go or in pursuit of a better opportunity.
After the merger, I slogged through another year and a half there and watched things continue to devolve into a toxic, traumatic mess, rampant with frat bro and sexual harassment culture.
When I quit, it was the beginning of 2019, and I’d seen enough of the digital media landscape to read the writing on the wall that the industry was probably not going to get any better. It broke my heart to leave the industry behind, but I was burned out and despondent.
I moved on to two high-pressure corporate content management jobs—which were truly only marginally better, with the exception of the pay—and so now here I sit, a freelance writer and editor for over a year now, still trying to recover from burnout.
Am I happier than I’ve been in a long time, despite the irregularity of a paycheck? Yes.
Am I writing things I want to be writing? With the exception of this Substack, no, not really.
The stuff I want to write about doesn’t pay well, and the areas I’m not passionate about (like SEO), do. Couple that with an industry that was already unstable, and has only become more so with the evolution of AI, and you’ve got a gigantic tangled mess.
Now, is it the fault of the romantic comedy genre that the print and digital media landscape is so awful, with layoffs upon layoffs happening every day?
Of course not.
And of course, I will caveat that the jobs of our favorite romcom protagonists weren’t necessarily perfect. Andie left Composure so she could write serious political pieces, like “How to Bring Peace to Tajikistan;” Jenna Rink’s magazine revamp went all wrong when their competitor rebranded first; Kevin Doyle was stuck writing wedding announcements, the last thing he wanted to be writing; and Carrie Bradshaw -
Well, it’s hard to see the downside of her career, actually. I recall her complaints that she didn’t make much money in the early beginnings of her column, but she was often buying $400 shoes, and she was later making an INSANE $4.50 a word at Vogue, so in my opinion, the girl has very little to complain about.
But still, all of these are kind of champagne problems to have, if you think about it. These protagonists with career-related problems either left their jobs for a better opportunity or created better ones at their current workplace; they weren’t plagued by industry-wide issues that were impossible to solve on their own. There are no better jobs to flee to in the current state of the industry, and there are very little ways of improving the ones we already have without a complete overhaul of the system.
So please, I would like to ask romantic comedies for my dreams back.
I’ve been rewatching The Good Wife with my partner, which has once again brought the mysterious feud between Julianna Margulies and Archie Panjabi back to the forefront of my mind.
For the uninitiated: these two played best friends-turned-sorta-enemies-turned-cordial-friends-again but stopped sharing the screen together at some point a few years into the show’s run, appearing to communicate only through telephone calls.
In fact, the feud was so bad that these two couldn’t even set aside whatever problems they had to film a goodbye scene in the same room and gave us this weird split screen instead:
There are a few different rumors about what happened between them that led to their never sharing the screen together again for the last 2.5 years they were both on the show. Both have and continue to remain relatively tight-lipped about it, which is personally devastating for me and my nosy need to know all the tea.
Anyway, this brings me to a thought I have often, which is: If you could know all the dirty details about three different well-kept secrets in Hollywood (or history, sports, etc., doesn’t have to be Hollywood), what would you choose?
For me, in no particular order:
Julianna Margulies and Archie Panjabi’s feud
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ entire relationship
What really happened between Taylor Swift and Karlie Kloss
Begging HBO Max to give me a 5-hour docuseries on each of these subjects, thanks so much!
I’m always, always listening to music, and I’ll often put one song on repeat that satisfies a very specific itch in my brain that week, whether new or classic. This week it’s “All For You” by Janet Jackson.
“All For You” is one of those songs I realized I don’t actually know at least half the words to, so I looked them up, and um…I was not prepared for what she actually says in the intro. She’s not saying something about having a nice backyard?! WHAT.
Can’t believe this really slipped through the fingers of all those conservative moms in the 90s. In the words of the Ashleys from Recess: scandalous!
It’s been a minute since I included this section (you can read the last one here), but this week my partner and I hit up a chain restaurant that’s a favorite in my family: Texas Roadhouse. If you have one near you and you’ve never been, run don’t walk—their food is fine and the atmosphere is probably only perfect if you’re a fan of shows like Yellowstone and Bonanza, BUT the dinner rolls with cinnamon butter are made from the Gods.
But anyway, I digress. The real reason we’re here: their fountain diet coke.
Texas Roadhouse’s diet coke doesn’t hit quite as good as McDonald’s (IYKYK), but it was the perfect temperature with the right amount of ice. My only complaint was the slightly subdued amount of carbonation. Not enough that my cousin and uncle—who prefer FLAT SODA (heathens!)—would’ve enjoyed it, but enough that I noticed a difference.
Based on my judging criteria (fizziness, spiciness level, temperature, and the amount of ice), I have given TR’s diet coke a 7/10.
And that’s the way it is
‘til next time,
Liv
P.S. - If you hit the heart at the top or bottom of this essay, it’ll help more people discover me and will also make my day!
I hear you - I still feel like Carrie Bradshaw whenever I sit down to write my newsletters. I feel like Carrie is the epitome of that unrealistic lifestyle - beautiful and spacious Manhattan apartment, love for expensive shoes and 99,9% of her meals out. But hey, one can dream!
Sigh, they definitely sold us the dream. I'm over here still wishing for the same as I slug through my day job (writing contracts at a tech company, which is not my soul's calling).
Side note, love your writing & happy I found your substack!