What ambition means to you

Plus my cultural fix – what to read, watch and listen to

Despite having been a little anxious about how it would land, it seems like my last newsletter about our relationship with ambition really struck a chord with so many of you. It was surreal to get sent an episode from one of Australia’s biggest podcasts, Shameless, in which this little newsletter was being recommended alongside blockbuster films (thank you, Zara McDonald, and welcome all my new Aussie subscribers!), prompting intergenerational conversations between the hosts and their listeners. 

And interestingly, from those beyond the creative industries! Turns out we have some kindred spirits in finance and even tech, too. Thank you to those who emailed & DMd with your own experiences, many of which latched onto the post-pandemic realisation that work should not come at the expense of life. And that a “career” is not something we need to have all figured out by the age of 30. (Even if Gen Z seem to think 30 is decrepit – at Primavera two 22-year-olds had the cheek to marvel at how good I looked “for 29”, while last week a tweet went viral for saying 34-year-old Hillary Duff had “aged like fine wine”. Please!)

Many of the responses I received agreed with how exhausting pruning our personal brands had become and welcomed the idea of making 9-5 sexy again. Freelance journalist Anna Codrea Rado shared her daily schedule in her newsletter the other week and I fully respect how strict she is with herself at drawing the day to a close at 5pm, no matter how guilty she may (but shouldn’t) feel. I was also stunned to find out that one very successful freelance journalist made six figures a year by churning out up to five pieces a day. His secret? Working out his day rate and allocating his time spent on each piece depending on its fee. Considering most publications pay so little, it worked out as about one hour per piece. How’s that for a nine to five?

Several of you said envisioning a career in journalism was difficult right now as commissions are at a scarcity for freelancers. One of you suggested one of the reasons might be because most editorial staff have returned to the office and so outsourced pieces are now being picked up by the editorial assistants/staff writers through meetings and physical proximity to editors.

Several young female freelance journalists also revealed a low commission rate had led to a draining reliance on personal writing – it seems personal essays (often about overcoming trauma) get much higher commission rates than features, because they traffic so much better online, get big clicks on social and are more likely to have a unique angle that can’t be snapped up by another writer. As someone who loves to read personal essays as a way to feel connection and comfort, I can understand why. But as Dolly Alderton said of her reason to stop her dating column: “​​living in a way that means that you are constantly looking, in your day-to-day life and in your relationships and your friendships, to find material that will then be immediately put on the page, black and white, presented to the world as who you are and how you live, for that then to be digested, commented on and analysed. That is one hell of a life choice."

But back to ambition – not all of you agreed with me! So I wanted to share one response in particular: from Cat Woods (with her permission), who not only gave me a new way to think about things but a banging book recommendation too. Which is just as well as this week’s post is, as promised, my cultural debrief. 

So, here is Cat’s incredibly smart email below, and my usual cultural picks at the bottom. Let me know what you think – and thanks again to Cat!

This reminds me of Poppy Z. Brite's biography of Courtney Love, in which she recounts how Courtney made a very deliberate plan on how she would achieve fame. She planned out who she would meet, the amount of weight she'd lose, the plastic surgery she'd need to have, the men she'd need to flirt with and befriend to get a record deal. She followed that plan to a T. I always recall thinking, when I read it in my 20s, that it was extremely impressive. I know there are male journos and music fans who would use this to fault her, but she was a hugely intelligent woman who had to raise herself in a broken family and who had witnessed - like so many women - men achieving what they want without much sacrifice while women have to prove their value over and over again. She manipulated a system that she didn't make. 

Anyway, this is a long way of saying, I think there's something more than just self-interested ambition at work in Wintour, Love and co. There's a survivor instinct and a canniness in manipulating a system that they didn't make - reading 8 newspapers a day and scoping out the scene in the evening is a necessary operation for a woman who would be accused of silver spoon-ing her way into the media. She knew her shit. That's impressive.

I read the beginnings of a book on owning your finances and understanding money a decade ago, which was something I was massively afraid to read, since my finances were abominable and I couldn't hold down office jobs. But, early on, the author (whose multi-million dollar media empire crashed years later, all her staff unpaid) says to write down with a pen and paper how you want to make money. I dismissed that as hokum but the next day, standing at my kitchen bench, I wrote down the publications I wanted to have stories in and what I envisioned doing for an income. I have written for most of those publications now, and achieved several other things I wrote down. I think the value of admitting to yourself what you want is much better than a plan. It gives you certainty over what you already know and chances are, you're already doing all the right things towards it. Is that ambitious? I don't know. I think it's just a willingness to admit to yourself what you want, even if you suspect you might not make it or that others don't believe you are capable. For me, it opened up a door in my mind which I'd been too scared to look into and say, "yes, that's what I want, even if it seems mad or stupid to me and anyone else". That's liberating. 

Do you feel like you need to separate yourself from your paid work? I don't know. If you love writing and music and ideas so deeply, enough to put up with this industry, doesn't that tell you a lot about what you value and who you are (paid or unpaid)? This email may not to be repurposed or republished without Cat Woods’s express permission

This week in links

I’ve been commissioning one of the best music writers in the business James Hall on the Wham! in China documentary George Michael never wanted his fans to see. Wham! wanted a piece of gushing pop promo, but director Lindsay Anderson had other ideas… This was a fantastic pitch, because it was an untold story about a core Telegraph musician, and because pieces about banned/unreleased/controversial art are usually always interesting - everyone loves a scandal. And this idea was so niche James actually had to go to the University of Stirling to watch the unreleased film by appointment!

I’ve been reading Annie Lord’s beautiful memoir Notes on Heartbreak. Regular readers of PTA will remember I interviewed Annie for the newsletter about how she got her Vogue dating column through a viral Vice article, and she was working on this debut book at the time, which has already made me cry and I’m only a quarter way through. It retraces the beginnings of her five-year relationship with Joe, who she had assumed she was going to spend the rest of her life with – until he broke up with her, out of the blue, on the side of the pavement. Alongside these memories, Annie tries to make sense of who she is without him, and tries to recover the “I” that had been eroded by the “we”.

Part of the reason why Annie is such a brilliant columnist is that she is so comfortable in exposing the intensity of feeling women are so often mocked and derided for, and capturing the theatrics of heartbreak that feel so integral to the healing process. “I like to measure my tears too. To see my suffering quantified, categorised”, she writes, with perfect self-awareness, before detailing just how much she will cry. “I cry until it feels as if I could fill my bedroom with tears, the carpet sodden, squelching under my toes, liquid rising up until I’m paddling in it, wetness creeping up the walls until the paint turns damp and flakes away. I’ll cry until the skin of my calves becomes pruney, until I can swim around the room, until my belongings start to float out of their drawers and my legs strain from doggy-paddling above the wet”. 

I’ve been interviewing the one and only Sean Paul for the new season of my celebrity podcast Straight Up, where my co-host Kathleen and I interrogate what it means to be famous in 2022 with the help of some very starry names. He revealed how the pressure of fame had prompted the need for marriage counselling, and how being famous really comes in handy when you’re in handcuffs…

I’ve been watching Everything I Know About Love, which made me painfully nostalgic for my three chaotic years spent living in Stockwell with two of my best university friends (and a fairweather mouse). Although, Maggie’s life seems impossibly sexier – we spent the majority of ours crying over abandoned baby animal videos with cups of tea, showering with our Brabantia bin (the pride of our kitchen, and the ONLY way to get it clean) and sending each other passive aggressive WhatsApps about who had taken the wrong packed lunch to work. (One flatmate has never forgiven me for forcing her out of her very important job at No10 to swap lunches with me at Victoria Station, after realising her soggy stir fry was no match for my once in a blue moon HelloFresh.) Anyway, the show is brilliant. My favourite line, on boyfriend etiquette: “If in doubt, act like a very respectful waiter in a high end restaurant”. I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve been listening to Jockstrap: melodic electronic music with beautiful, ethereal vocals that makes you want to spin in circles under the sun. You may have already heard their breakthrough hit Concrete Over Water (watch the AMAZING video), but they’ve just released Glasgow, and their debut album will be out in September. London Grammar and James Blake fans, this one’s for you.

I can’t stop thinking about this wonderful Vogue essay on the power of therapy, which author Ella Risbridger wrote following a suicide attempt. As Ella writes, many people tend to view therapy as a short-term “fix”, and the idea of long-term therapy being an indulgent luxury only out of touch Americans do. But, actually, writes Ella: “it was only when I started thinking about mental health in those terms – the same way I thought about my physical needs, like food and water and warmth – that I could begin to get better. Or no, not “get better”, but to live a better life”. 

Thanks for reading Pass the Aux! Say hello on Twitter @eleanorhalls1 or send me an email eleanorahalls@gmail.com.

This newsletter is free to read and I would love to be able to keep it that way, but if you fancy buying me a coffee to keep me going during my evening writing sessions and support my work, then I would be very grateful! You can do so via Ko-fi.