New Job Navigations
I’m now one week into my new gig at City Cast Twin Cities. This is still a media job. . .but it’s my first non-radio job in about ten years. I’ve got all the “new employee” stuff to do like filling out forms and remembering what HSCA stands for. I also am in a bunch of ZOOM meetings. It’s a work from home gig on a day-to-day basis. It’s a lot to navigate to go back into the world of back-to-back ZOOMs. I only associate that life with the worst of the pandemic. I never went fully online; MPR hosts went in even in March and April of 2020. But, when my life was full of ZOOMs it was terrible. I thought we were all going to die. I was convinced the revolution was starting. It was a complicated time. Now ZOOM is just people telling you how to add portrait light and recommending you move your monitor higher.
The work is amazing. The team is amazing. We are creating a daily podcast for the Twin Cities that will be launching in a matter of weeks. I am working with a lot of new people, a handful of folks I know relatively well plus I am already pretty damn close with Anna Weggel who serves as the Executive Producer for City Cast Twin Cities. If we do our job right we will become an integral part of the conversation surrounding the Twin Cities. We will share episodes, newsletters, social media content and events that will offer important, joyous and useful stories for anyone living in the Twin Cities. It’s a tall order but I have tremendous faith in the product as it exists in other cities, and I have even stronger faith in what I believe this team can deliver for the Twin Cities. More to come on that.
I am trying to get comfortable with being back home in the evenings. On paper it’s a pure win. I go from being away from my kids and wife for the most vital hours of family time due to being on the air until 7pm. . .and I move into a new reality where I wrap things up shortly before 5pm and walk two blocks down to pick my kids up from after-school care and start hanging. I know it will end up being awesome, I mean it’s already awesome. But, I’m not used to it. And I am realizing I am at the age where everything I am not used to is not a slam dunk for me. I need to be comfortable in my space, I need to understand my rhythms. The level of irregularity I dealt with in my twenties and early thirties just couldn’t work for me at that age. I accept that. I can’t wait for my new rhythms to become my rhythms. I will say, leaving daily radio has already made listening to radio way easier and more enjoyable. I’ve been bumping Jazz88, Radio K, KEXP and KFAI and it has been downright wonderful. Radio is such a gift, what a joy to listen to it and to make it.
I want to encourage you to check out a couple cool things coming up. . .some that I’m involved in. . .some that I’m just xcited about.
READ:
Check out this piece about a coffee shop that was at Lexington and Selby in the early 90s. I missed this coffeeshop cause I didn’t arrive until 1996 but my barber talks about it all the time and this oral history is just a huge treat. Shout out to Meghan Mahar for sending it my way.
Please also subscribe to my friend Meghan Mahar’s new Substack. . .particularly if you love 90s nostalgia and graffiti.
DO:
My best friend Martin has gotten into doing pop-up bookshops and they’ve been a joy to go. He’s got one at a premier St. Paul Coffee Shop on Saturday September 28. Check it out here.
MY STUFF:
City Cast Twin Cities is going to be ramping our presence up in advance of our launch of daily episodes. Please sign up for our newsletter and follow us on IG now (you signing up now will also help communicate to City Cast that they got the right team for the job and a team that can attract eyeballs and earholes to our offerings).
I’m DJing at Small Hours in Northeast Minneapolis on Wednesday night from 7-10. I can’t wait to pull out my records and share some stuff in a really great space. Details here.
I assure you, Big Trouble is playing at The White Squirrel on Saturday, September 27. My awesome brother Steve is still putting the finishing touches on the flyer but I promise you, we are playing. It’s from 6-8, it’s free and we’d love to see you there.
Bracelets. My daughter S. is working on a bracelets website that is hosted on my website mcpherson.club. She’s doing it with the neighbors. If you want to see how 8 and 10 year olds relate to squarespace menus with minimal adult oversight. . .have at it. Bracelets yay.com.
