Michael Dean Clark

On the end of a journal I loved

Creating a home for a wide swath of voices and fostering them all is the most critical work the literary community should be doing. Drunk Monkeys did just that. (10/10)

michaeldeanclark.com/blog-1/0p61h7u8oumn2sbow051qy2j7gcurn

n short, I knew who I was working with at DM and that mattered. Deeply.

So there is sadness in the end of Drunk Monkeys, but also real appreciation on my part, as there should be. (9/10)

And those people are a primary reason I encouraged my students to consider applying to intern there. Publishing, as a broader industry, is so often simply a profit-first endeavor, it makes internalizing the core ethos of relationships and risk critical for those entering the business. (8/10)

the one perfect treatment and I made a case for the movie Sunset Park being better than the sum of its parts.

It’s the rare journal that allows for this balance of serious and strange, of pop and art. Creating this kind of space is a credit to the people who ran DM all these years. (7/10)

After that essay, Sean or Kolleen would reach out from time to time and ask if I had anything for their pop culture series, “One Perfect Episode” and “It’s Good, Actually.” The nerd in me said yes, and then actually wrote what I said I had. CHiPs, Psych, and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air got (6/10)

So, when Kolleen and the crew chose to publish it, a switch flipped and I pushed into the rest of the ideas I had bouncing around in my head. In fact, there’s a direct line from “Subsidence” to “Signal to Noise Ratio,” my most well-received essay to date. (5/10)

ESSAY / Subsidence / Michael Dean Clark I Drunk Monkeys | Literature, Film, Television It’s the ‘just’ that matters. It makes the experience manageable for people who have no trouble laying down and sinking head-first into an undisturbed pond. Insomniacs, however, know the secret of…

When they said yes, I was ecstatic. At the time, “Subsidence” was a foray into what has become a series of pieces I’m closing in on having a book’s-worth of. And if I’m honest, I wasn’t sure I could pull off the form I was wrestling with. (4/10)

www.drunkmonkeys.us/2017-posts/2...

He'd recently moved onto the masthead as a section editor during his time in the OC.

From there, he connected me with co-founder Matt, a guy I’ve come to like a great deal. I did an episode of his podcast and then, after seeing what DM put out, submitted an essay I cared deeply about. (3/10)

Most journals I admire, well, I do that admiring from the outside. From the distance of a reader. Through the mediation of Submittable or Duotrope or New Pages or Chill Subs…

But this was not the case at DM. I was first introduced to the space by my former student, now friend, Sean. (2/10)

"On the end of a journal I loved"

Woke up this morning to the news that Drunk Monkeys is closing its doors. To be fair, I had a bit of a heads from a friend on the staff who let me know it was coming.

That foreknowledge actually made the news a little sadder. (1/10)

Just a quick note of thanks. My series about being on the market ended Wednesday was mostly a set of musings in narrative form, not advice or complaint. So I am grateful for such a consistent group reading along. Here's the whole series in one shot: michaeldeanclark.com/blog-1/on-th...

Though the world is heavy, I am thankful. May we use today to refocus: more giving and less taking.

Part 17: In which this series—though not my job search—comes to an end.

But as the title of my first post said, in Tom Petty’s voice, the waiting is the hardest part.

buff.ly/1X9q4MN

I find myself thinking about how the professional world makes the desire to feel these things so strongly self-centered it mutes our responsibility to provide them for others.

This is hopefully what I will carry into whatever my next season holds.

Life is like this, even as I wish it were not. For anyone. This is not a perspective being unemployed has given me. Rather, it has simply reaffirmed my sense that purpose and dignity should be the goal of our pursuits, and not just for ourselves.

Ok, sure. All good things on that list. But, as with all lists, it’s incomplete.

It’s also a time of stress. Of loss. Of kinship with others in the same position. Of doubt. Of frailty. Of silence. Of feeling dispossessed.

But I did want to tie a bit of a bow on what I’ve posted to this point. This period of my life feels untethered. I’ve been told to look at it as a chance for redefinition. For growth. For rest. For reevaluation. For spiritual seeking. For learning patience. For giving myself over to my moment.

On the Market: Part 17 in a series

On closing this series (for now)

A note on the exit door: I’m not so much ending this series with this entry, as I’m still on the market after all…

I may add some thoughts from time to time. Then again, I may not. Not all—or most—of life needs to be content.

Hot take: Empire and Rogue One alternate as 1-2 for me.

Best believe they’ll hear about it when I find one. Even though I lost my job, I’m still teaching. Them and myself.

buff.ly/wsQrMd0

But these were all firsts for me, as they are for most of my former students. Branches in a path full of possibilities. Meanwhile, I’m standing at a dead end I didn’t see coming, scanning the tree line for the hint of a path out.

my first job in journalism and the year I spent going to work expecting it to be the day when they figured out they’d hired an impostor. Realizing not long after that how quickly the work of trying to be successful was killing me.

And…I’m jealous of their youth and energy and the stage of the process they are in. They are all potential and hope. Their stories are in the earliest chapters.

I am by no means romanticizing the circumstances they find themselves in. I may be older, but I remember the mad scramble to find

The wins. (I got a job with benefits!) The moments of affirmation. (My boss is impressed with my ability to pick things up that weren’t part of my major.)

I’m proud of them; hurt with them; want to call some of the places that turned them down and tell them how badly they whiffed.

In the interim, emails and texts have arrived from students about their own job searches. The lowest lows. (What if I can’t find work and I lose the room I’m renting?) The frustrations. (I can’t even find an option that’s connected to what I care about.)

Months have stretched on. Interviews and near misses. Hopes raised and ghosted. My file of application materials has grown fatter, my list of job search sub-labels in my email longer. A job? Still elusive.

And then May arrived and I was one of them. Asking for my own letters and references. Contacting people in various professional networks. Doom-scrolling job sites. Shaking my fist at the heavens and stress-writing through the empty spaces left in my days of unemployed sameness.

At the end of each term, I wrote letters of recommendation for students ejected into their professional future-turned-present. For graduate programs and schools and law firms and corporations and nonprofits and news outlets…the list extends…

As a result, I spent copious hours talking with students about deciding between various resume and cover letter styles, networking, leveraging internship and indirect experience in interview settings, responding to gamed online application systems, building brand and platform…the list extends...