Working, working, and waiting for the lulls
Issue 53 : Mar/Apr 2007
My friend George will occasionally point out that when you work for yourself you only have to work about half-time. He explains that, since you work for yourself, you get to choose which 12 hours of each and every day of the seven days of each and every week you do, in fact, work. It isn’t actually funny, except to George, but he has set a good example for me by doing exactly that for all but the first three years we have known each other.
In those first three years we each stood watch for about eight hours, performed about eight hours of collateral duties, and had the privilege of sleeping for seven hours straight every third day, with the rest of the sleep coming in little three-hour chunks. Working half-time by George’s definition does not seem so bad compared to that, but we were young then and, I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not young anymore.
The magazine business has a schedule and pace to it that will brook no laggards. Ink goes on paper on a certain day; copies are mailed and go on newsstands on schedule. “That’s good, now start the next one.” Karen is the managing editor. Her capacity for work is truly astounding. I’m sure there were Calvinists in that gene pool.
I, on the other hand, come from simple hedonists. I can imagine sailing off to otherwise and elsewhere. It is tempting to think of starting a magazine or restoring a boat as projects with clearly defined beginnings and endings. This has some value for morale, but it is a fallacy. Only the simplest of boats will give their owners some rest between bouts of repair and maintenance. I used to think there would be a day when we would have finished “founding” a magazine. Communications would evolve to a high and durable level of refinement. Processes and procedures would be established that could be followed by others and, at the end of a long list of tasks, the magazine would come off the press and go into the trucks. Others could do these things; we would not be needed at all. Ha!
Battling entropy
Both a boat and a business must reckon with change in the form of entropy, which I will define here as the tendency for the universe and all things in it to wind down to a uniform, even-temperatured mush that possesses no information and from which no useful energy may be obtained . . . absolute and ultimate disorder. Man and other life forms battle entropy as a simple matter of their existence, and it is the story of that battle that defines all that is valiant, great, and good about life. The boat in the back of the storage lot dies fairly quickly from neglect. She must soon have an industrious crew or she will be beyond the reach of even the most foolish optimist. Entropy gives no quarter.
So it is with a business. The role of a particular media element, such as a print magazine, must be viewed against a background of constant change in the media sector. What is the role now; what will it be next year or in five years? How will computers, the Internet, and other communications devices change what the reader wants from this magazine? Survival for this publication will require constant evaluation and constant change. That is the role and major concern of “founders” until they write their names on a rock somewhere. The clay is always wet, it never gets baked. The process must be continuously revised. The battle with entropy is a dynamic thing offering no endpoint I am willing to accept.
Still, in the lulls I will go sailing and imagine elsewhere and otherwise. It’s OK.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
