After months of working as a freelance content writer, I didn’t have much to show for myself. No bylines under my own name. No reputation.
For most in the B2B marketing world, Mariya Delano didn’t exist.
But I was too scared to publish anything on my website, because it already got some traffic from posts that I commissioned some other writers to create. Posting on the site felt like a lot of pressure.
(2 / ) So to find my own voice, I chose to start writing under my own name in the least stressful way possible. I quietly launched a newsletter, called it “Attention Deficit Marketing Disorder” (ADMD), drew a logo, and posted a link to my Mastodon account with only 100 followers.
Within a day, my first newsletter essay was shared with over 500,000 people when Rand Fishkin recommended it on his Twitter and Mastodon. Suddenly, I had subscribers and views.
(3 / ) My first try at writing under my own name forced me into the spotlight and straight into the attention that I was so desperately afraid of.
I had no idea what to do next. How could I ever follow up a launch like that? But now people were waiting. And I, who dreamt of having an audience for my writing since I was 8 years old, wanted to embrace this opportunity of a lifetime.
(4/ ) So I kept writing. I wrote whatever came to mind, somehow tying my personal reflections, cultural observations, and musings to marketing. The more praise I got, the more risks I decided to take.
My marketing newsletter ended up covering the most difficult topics on my mind: self-esteem, professionalism, hustle culture, grief, mental illness, trauma, love, joy, connection, fear. #story#marketing#newsletter#career
(9/ ) Newsletter essay 10 - “AI Writing Tools Won't Save You from Creating Content”.
My first ever newsletter, one of my first articles under my own name. And an initial reaction to the rise of #AI and #ChatGPT all the way back from the ancient past of... January 2023.
After seeing all the AI hype play out for a year... I still agree with basically everything I wrote.
Resume writing looks so intimidating. Why is this shit even necessary? Years ago, I’ve been told at high school that I will get auto rejected over a simple spelling or grammar mistake. And I feel pressured to make my resume pretty and well organized.
The way a resume looks or formatted shouldn’t be a determining factor for whether or not an applicant gets accepted. Shouldn’t skills or experience determine that?
#TheMetalDogArticleList #guitarworld
“Lars said, ‘You’re not really used to this kind of music, are you?’” Les Claypool on his failed Metallica audition
According to James Hetfield, Les Claypool was “too good” for the thrash metal giants
Starting Monday, I will no longer be a Postdoc Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
I will be a SCIENTIST.
“””
Dear Shawn Jones,
We are pleased to offer you the position of Scientist 2 in the Information Sciences Group (CCS-3). This represents a conversion of your student/postdoc appointment.
“””
Fear of being fired may indicate a toxic environment. Here’s an example.
Retail operations were stopped by a brief network misconfiguration about a week after I was hired. As the Director of Infrastructure, I called in my Senior Network Engineer and asked him what happened. The outage was caused by a person – that he wouldn’t name.
I asked, “Why on earth won’t you tell me who did it?”
He replied, “It was an innocent mistake. They didn’t know it would have that effect, and I don’t want them to get fired for it.”
Wow. This guy didn’t know me, but I now knew something about the culture I had inherited from my predecessor.
I said, “I have no intention of firing this person. I want to make sure they’re educated about what happened, and understand good procedure for next time so we can avoid a duplication. By talking with this person, I can also find out if this is a broader issue that other people need to learn about. And this gives them an opportunity to help me understand what training they might need to help them grow in their job.”
Mistakes will be made. Operations will be affected. But you don’t fire good people for honest mistakes.
Willful negligence? Bye. But not for honest mistakes.
When people make honest mistakes, the manager is more likely to be the point of failure, for not providing adequate training.
THE LESSON
If you’re in an environment where you’re afraid you might get fired for doing your best…
If you’re given responsibilities without adequate training, and you’ll be blamed for failure…
That place is toxic.
It won’t get better with time, unless new leadership is brought in.
To achieve contentment, you need to move on.
Actually I’m looking into the Identity Access Management certification (SC-300) before I jump into the Security one. It’s more practical with my current job. Got through one module on MS Learn yesterday and will keep trucking today.