LinkedIn, Searching, Re-listen, Mediatox, Production

Friends,

Life is life-ing. I am sure you all feel the same way.

Last month I panicked when I realized that there was a Fox News program called “The Five”. Instead of pausing, breathing, and thinking things through, I swiftly changed the name of the newsletter, reworked some graphics in Canva and sent out my SOS to all subscribed.

Do I regret it a month or so later? Kind of. I liked the name “The Five” and it was clearly unaffiliated with Fox News, but I felt the need to distance myself more.

I’ll stick with Go. It is the English phonetic spelling of the Japanese word for “five”. In Kanji it looks like this: 五. In Hiragana (another of the language’s three character systems) it looks like this: ご.

Let’s get to the five words, shall we?

1️⃣ LinkedIn

I recently joined a new professional (virtual) network and in one of the group sessions I shared my struggles with not having a LinkedIn profile when it is often a required line item on a job application. I expanded upon my values around staying off of social media to help others get a sense of why I had made this choice. In that same conversation I shared the kind of work I was looking for — a creative producer role in audio, events, and/or integrated content within a large media company.

And then someone else on the call chimed in. She was a creative producer within a large media company. She said, “If I was hiring a producer and they didn’t have LinkedIn, I would throw out their application.”

A knot formed in my throat. Sweat broke out on my upper lip.

I was ready to throw away my values and reactivate my LinkedIn profile.

Instead I went for a walk. And while offline, away from screens, a wild idea came to mind.

What if I create a mock LinkedIn profile on my own website? That way I have a link to share in those required fields on job applications AND I can have a bit of fun with my choice to remain social media free.

A few weeks later and I have made this idea a reality.

You can check it out here: https://hillaryrea.com/linkedin

If you would like to create a similar type of offsite profile, please do. Join the movement!

2️⃣ Searching

I got a text from a friend the other day that read:

“What do you do with automatic AI answers on every search engine since you are anti-AI?”

Here is what I told her:

“I switched to Firefox as my browser and toggled the search engine to Duck Duck Go and then I went into settings and turned off all of the AI features.”

Searching the world wide web outside of Google is a TRIP! It is also freeing to get served information that isn’t automatically generated by AI.

Am I truly Anti-AI? YES. But I also know that I have to accept that it is here and learn how to live with. I am spending some time doing my own research and making decisions around how I will engage. I will keep you posted!

Oh and another twist on this word… if any of you are in the middle of a job search, I just learned about a job search site that I have found has its own wonderful (non AI) search engine: https://hiring.cafe/

3️⃣ Mediatox

My good friend Jenny Wise has recently rebranded and launched a new iteration of her work, now called Mediatox. With this change she has re-branded her podcast with the same name. I had the pleasure of being her most recent guest.

If you have the time, you should listen to the three episodes that come before this one. Her first episode is a conversation with her son and daughter and it reminded me of my former podcast, Rashomon, in terms of the multiple perspectives on particular shared events.

You can also listen to Jenny on the first season of my podcast, Five Word Life Story.

4️⃣ Re-listen

In my conversation with Jenny, we talk about my first podcast, Rashomon. In talking about it, I realized how proud I was of this three season narrative feat. It was a lot of hard work fueled by a lot of passion. Since so much time had passed since making the show, I decided to listen to two of my favorite episodes — both about the Gethard Family and the never-ending saga of Gregg Gethard’s appearance on the 1990s PBS game show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?.

I am sharing this re-listen with you so that you go back into the archives of your own creative work and experience it again with distance and perspective. It’s a really lovely experiment! Let me know how it goes for you.

5️⃣ Production

I am currently in production for Season 3 of Five Word Life Story. It’s been great jumping back in. I’m currently grappling with the decision to stick with my current workflow or implement additional software that is considered to be the gold standard for making podcasts. I will keep you posted on how this goes and when I will have new episodes to share with you all.

Thank you for sticking with me during this huge time of professional and creative transition. It’s been a wild ride with a lot of iteration and experimentation. I’m grateful to have this space as an outlet.

As always, feel free to write back and let me know what you are up to. And if you like this week’s newsletter, please forward to a friend.

Cheers,

Hillary