(via ChannelAlex)
In 2007, The Miami Herald hired recent college graduate Brayden Simms to launch a blog about frugal living, called “Heavy Thrifting.”
By now you’ve probably heard the story, which is like something straight from the pages of Kafka’s unpublished diaries.They hired Brayden, fired Brayden, and then re-hired Brayden to blog about the experience of being fired.
It’s said that great photography comes from being in the right place at the right time. It’s less often said that great writing comes from having the world play poker with your soul.
But it’s true. Brayden’s blog was a hit. His travails were featured on NPR, in New York Magazine, and at Gawker. His story served as a parable for all of us struggling to chart a course for our dreams in an uncertain economy and the creeping feeling that the jobs we trained for are disappearing, and that we’re all living in an empire in decline.
His sharp writing, always subtle and understated and hardly ever snarky (rare for blogs), was a refreshingly honest take on the 400 blows it takes to find your way. It included plenty of humorous takes on the soul-searching, resume-writing, and the solicitations of perfect strangers offering to help him out in his very public and twisted time of need.
Well, I learned today that Brayden has finally moved on from the Herald and “Heavy Thrifting.” Here’s his final post.
This transitional phase has been … trying. For nearly two months now I’ve been living in limbo, working a job I’ve been destined to lose, living a life I’d decided to leave. Each day has been a test in futility, toiling with no one watching, waiting for my new life to begin.
But now, with only one week left, I can finally see the light at the end of The Herald.
The Miami Herald is keeping his blog, though, with the same title, the same url, the same brand, in a clear attempt to capitalize on the fans he earned over time. Which is as likely as Shia replacing Harrison as the next Indiana Jones. They’ve brought the blog back to its original mission of chronicling the nickling and diming of young people with good educations and good jobs, trying to keep their dreams, like a peach in a backpack, unbruised. Which wasn’t a great idea in the first place, and now just seems like a novel pretext for the newspaper paying its writers shit. The replacements are interns, by the way, which in any job is like being replaced by a machine. At the top of the post is a picture of the new writer Brian McPherson, before his heart is torn from his chest by the man in the photo with the monkey helmet.
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