I’m back on ZDNET as of a few days ago. Some of you are probably saying, “back?” Yes, I’m back. Maybe I should clarify. Picture it. Charlotte, North Carolina. 2012. It was about 6AM local time. I was at my humble desk in my humble abode known as “Chateau Ghetto” taking a look at what was going on for the start of Mobile World Congress which was happening in Barcelona, Spain.
I hope I don’t upset ZDNet and Red Ventures by modifying this logo for story’s sake. . . .
At the time, I’d been invited to join a startup tech blog called aNewDomain which was lead by Gina Smith. My intent was to get up early and write about anything I found interesting regarding the conference. To my surprise, I found a PDF file from Microsoft detailing the consumer preview of its Windows 8 operating system. I thought it was pretty cool to see the documentation about the “new look” of Windows and put a blog post together detailing what I had found. An hour or so passes and my Google chat window started blowing up with messages of excitement from Gina Smith. This caught me by surprise. Apparently, my blog post about the “leaked” document was a big hit. This lead to other sites picking up the story and linking back to me. In particularly, Mr. Jason Hiner of ZDNet mentioned my post.
This blew my mind because I was a big fan of the work Mr. Hiner had done over the years as tech news and tech journalism was all the buzz. To see he mentioned lil’ ol’ me in his piece was something I’ll never forget. But anyway, I’m technically “back on” ZDNet now. This time I’m on the team as a freelance contributor.
What does this mean?
As a freelance contributor, I’ll be creating content around the wonky world of consumer technology in the form of blog posts and videos. I’ll also lend a hand in shooting photography for the team as a hired camera, if you will. I look forward to working with Mr. Hiner and the ZDNet team. He and I go back quite a ways as he also gave me a freelance gig many years ago on TechRepublic. When I joined TWiT in 2019, I had to drop my contributions to TechRepublic because of some dumb ass proposition here in California. But yes, this is going to be a fun exerience. I look forward to it.
Why freelance and not full-time?
I’m freelance for a couple of reasons. First off, full-time employment isn’t offered at this time. Which is fine. Secondly, I can’t say that I’m interested in full-time work at this time. Real talk.
For pretty much most of my professional career, I’ve been a bit of a self-starter and on my own. Even though the majority of my career was in IT at a big company of some sort, I had a lot of autonomy and freedom. I “worked from home” for many years before that phrase was normalized during the 2020 pandemic. I didn’t have to deal with micro-management leadership. I’m grateful for that. So I always felt like a contractor, or freelancer in that regard.
Now in 2023 and 2024, we continue to read and hear about companies struggling financially around the country. I was laid off from TWiT in December 2023. It wasn’t personal, it was business and it made sense. I would have laid me off, too. Not to mention other huge companies such as Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Sony and many more laying off staff in the coming months.
Are you sure?
I personally don’t believe finding full-time work in my field is going to happen. It’s a tough business. I want to be in control of my own destiny for that reason. I previously worked at a company of almost half of my life. I was given an opportunity to take another job elsewhere for better wages even though I wasn’t looking for a new job. You know what the company said to me which I worked at for 16 years?
“Are you sure?”
Not, “what can we do to keep you here” or anything of that nature. NO FREAKIN’ LOYALTY TOWARDS ME or anything I’d done for the previous 16 years as an employee. I was naive and that changed my outlook going forward. I needed to be able to control my destiny.
What I went through at TWiT was great. The Laportes were great to me. I had autonomy and was also able to learn other things during my time there. But again, it was more of a mental note to me that I need to keep pushing to have control. So I’m doing everything I can to get Ant Pruitt Media back on track and rollin’ forward.
Anyway, that’s the news. Be sure to check out ZDNet for other great consumer tech content. They do a good job of keeping it real when it comes to all the fuss about the new hotness of tech. I’ll see you soon. Thanks for all the support.