i don’t dream of labor. except maybe editorial.

I would like to start by saying that I do not dream of labor. I have never looked at the concept of working for the next forty-something years and thought wowwww I cannot wait. If somebody told me tomorrow that I had inherited enough money to spend the rest of my life traveling, writing random things on the internet, taking photos, opening little businesses when I got bored and going to lunch at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday, I would probably never open Indeed again. But unfortunately I have expensive taste, several cities I would like to live in, a wedding to pay for, approximately 400 future travel plans and a very specific vision for my life, so yes, employment will be necessary, and if I have to labor, put me in editorial.

There is something about magazines, media and editorial that has had me in a chokehold forever. I want the brainstorms, the stupidly specific story pitches, the photoshoots, the interviews, the headlines that get rewritten fifteen times because somebody suddenly hates the word “the,” the culture conversations, the events, the PR packages stacked somewhere in the office, the writers arguing over commas, all of it. I don’t know if this makes me a victim of The Devil Wears Prada or simply someone who loves organized chaos, but unfortunately the disease is terminal.

i have always wanted to be where things are happening

I think what attracts me to media more than anything is that I hate feeling disconnected from culture. I want to know what people are listening to, what they’re wearing, what they’re watching, what everyone is randomly obsessed with this week and WHY. I love pop culture, music, fashion, entertainment, photography, internet culture, girlhood, nostalgia and the weird little things that become important because enough of us collectively decide they are important. I can talk about why a celebrity breakup matters and then immediately turn around and write 1,500 words about what an old Disney Channel outfit says about being a teenage girl in 2013, and that is genuinely my idea of fun.

I don’t necessarily want to just consume culture, I want to talk about it. I want to photograph it, interview the people making it, write about it, package it, argue about what deserves a story and figure out how to make somebody else care about it too. Basically, I want to be in the group chat where everyone decides what we’re talking about tomorrow, and that sounds way more appealing to me than spending my entire life doing something where every day feels exactly the same.

yes, magazines specifically have brainwashed me

There is just something about a magazine that the internet has never completely replaced for me. A magazine feels intentional. Somebody chose the cover, somebody chose the photos, somebody decided what order you were going to experience everything in, somebody spent an unreasonable amount of time deciding which headline looked better in 48-point font. Even when I’m consuming editorial online now, I still love when something feels like it belongs in a magazine.

I love publications that actually have a personality. I don’t want to read something and feel like it could have been published literally anywhere. Give me a point of view, give me beautiful photography, give me writers who sound like actual people, give me headlines that make me need to click even though I was supposed to be doing something else. I love the world of publications like Vogue, Rolling Stone, Nylon, Teen Vogue, The Cut, i-D, Interview, Cosmopolitan and all the smaller independent publications that somehow make you want to redo your entire wardrobe after scrolling for six minutes.

And honestly, I think I’m especially drawn to publications that understand that girls can care about a million things at once. I can care about politics and lipstick. I can care about my career and a celebrity’s terrible outfit. I can read something devastating and important and then immediately need to know where somebody’s boots are from. That does not make either part of me fake, it just makes me a person with tabs open.

the job title changes depending on the day

Much like every other area of my life, my dream job is also unfortunately incapable of being one thing. Sometimes I want to be an editor, sometimes I want to be the person writing the features, sometimes I want to be taking the photos, sometimes I want to be creative directing the shoot and telling everyone that actually we need more flowers and the lighting is wrong. Sometimes I want to work in entertainment journalism and interview musicians, actors and artists about whatever weird little world they’ve created, and sometimes I want to work on social and digital editorial because I genuinely think the internet is its own language and some brands speak it fluently while others sound like someone’s dad learned what TikTok was yesterday.

And obviously there is also the version of me who wants to run the entire thing, because why stop at editor when Editor-in-Chief exists? I want to sit in a room with writers, photographers, designers and other deeply opinionated people and decide what we should make. I want somebody to pitch something completely insane and for everyone to go waittttt actually… and then suddenly we are doing it. I want the creative part and the strategy part, I want to care about what looks good AND whether anyone is actually reading it.

Maybe this is why I keep coming back to editorial no matter how many other career ideas enter my brain. It’s one of the only spaces where almost everything I like can exist in the same room: writing, photography, music, entertainment, marketing, design, people, storytelling, events, culture. It scratches too many parts of my brain at once.

my completely realistic imaginary workday

Obviously my perfect editorial career exists in a universe where nobody is underpaid, deadlines are reasonable and I somehow live ten minutes from the office despite being in New York City. Let me have this. I wake up in my cute apartment, and NO I will not be discussing what this apartment costs because this is my fantasy and rent does not exist here. I get dressed in something that is just professional enough that nobody can technically say anything but still cute enough that if someone randomly announces there is an event tonight I do not need to go home first.

I stop for coffee because apparently Dream Career Lis is a morning person, and I get to the office sometime around nine-ish. The office is obviously one of those creative offices where everyone’s desk has trinkets and magazines stacked everywhere and nobody is wearing a suit. There is a morning editorial meeting where everyone throws out ideas, somebody brings up something weird happening online, someone else has an interview opportunity, and I have a completely unnecessary but very passionate pitch about some piece of 2000s culture that I swear is actually saying something about society. They approve it because again, this is my fantasy.

Maybe I spend part of the day editing a writer’s story, then I’m working with photographers on an upcoming shoot, then somebody asks me to interview an artist I actually listen to and I have to pretend I am very normal about it. Lunch is with coworkers somewhere nearby where we mostly talk shit, which is obviously a very important part of the dream. In the afternoon there’s a photoshoot or an event or some random thing happening that gets me away from my laptop for a little while, then I’m back at my desk finishing something, picking photos, rewriting a headline, checking what is performing well online and probably sending somebody a Slack message that says “wait I have an idea.”

Maybe there’s an album listening party that night. Maybe a premiere. Maybe nothing happens and I go home, put on pajamas and write something for Sunday Girl because apparently working in editorial all day has somehow not stopped me from wanting to write more. Again, disease.

maybe i actually do dream of labor a tiny bit

I know the real version of this career is not going to be a montage. There will be boring days, deadlines that make me want to throw my laptop, meetings that could have been emails and emails that should have never been sent at all. There will probably be stories I do not care about and edits I disagree with and jobs where I am doing way less creative stuff than I imagined, and I know that.

But when I picture the kind of work that could actually keep me interested for a long time, I always come back to something involving people and stories and culture. I want to make things. I want to document things while they are happening. I want to talk to interesting people and then immediately call my friends afterward because girl you will NEVER believe what they just told me. I want to write things people send to each other, I want to create photos someone saves, and I want to work on something and then see it out in the world and know there is a tiny piece of me inside it.

Maybe one day that means writing for a publication I’ve loved forever, maybe it means becoming an editor, maybe it means creative direction, maybe it means building something of my own bigger than I can picture right now. Knowing me, it will probably be some weird combination of all of them.

So no, I still do not dream of labor, I dream of sleeping in and having disposable income, but if you see me running around a magazine office with an iced coffee, three deadlines, six tabs open, a photoshoot happening in twenty minutes and somebody asking me if I approved the final headline yet, I might actually be having the time of my life.

xoxo,
Lisitalala, Now known as Sunday girl :pp