Alex has left the building. My boss, the Editor of
Frontiers is moving on to pursue a Masters in Texas. His contribution to the magazine is obvious to anyone who picked it up before he arrived, but I actually owe Alex a lot personally. He basically taught me how to be an editor. I've always been good at telling stories and coming up with cool ways of telling them, but thanks to a year with Alex I learned how to actualize my ideas. A lot of this means learning to email (if you're scoffing, realize I answer somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-200 emails a day) and following up, but the biggest lesson I can attribute to Alex is the value of planning.
Alex never once said that an idea I came up with wasn't feasible or too hard, rather he challenged me to develop the specific route that would get us there. In
GTD terms, he's a master of "action steps" and if there's been one weak point in my professional life, it's been follow-through. This may make me sound retarded, but Alex was the first person to get me to see that the only way I can make the awesome things in my head happen is by doing nuts and bolts work on a daily basis.
I know a lot of people really like
Frontiers. Before I was an editor, I was a fan. The kind of coverage the magazine has had is the direct result of Alex and the editorial processes he put in place. I'm excited for the future, don't get me wrong, and change is always inevitable, but I'll miss having Alex around--and I imagine so will L.A.
Labels: frontiers, gay
