K:

So lately, I’ve been thinking about it’s been a while since we’ve done a What’s Going on With Us. And we’ve had our second shot, and I feel like that’s a major turning point for most people in their lives, but not for us.

C:

So you’ve been thinking about us and how special we are.

K:

Yeah, and how we need let all our beautiful Musick Notes know what’s going on with us. I don’t feel like we’ve done on a What’s Going on With Us. I’ve entered a new phase in my PhD.

C:

You have.

K:

You’ve entered a new phase in work.

C:

I have.

K:

We have a lot of stuff going on. Don’t front like we don’t.

C:

Okay, yeah, we do. We do have a lot of stuff going on.

K:

Yeah. So why you fronting?

C:

I’m never fronting. The people can’t see it, but I’m backing up.

K:

As he sits statically… excuse me, as Chad sits statically in a chair. Oh okay, now Chad’s going to wiggle? Is that what you’re doing now?

C:

That’s what I’m doing there’s nothing static about me. I am all dynamic.

K:

Okay, this is just make a liar of Kisstopher right now, that’s the channel we’re on.

C:

I don’t make liars. I make liars horny.

K:

Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. So I’m going to do my PhD stuff first, because I feel like like my PhD stuff intersects with your work stuff.

C:

It does.

K:

Because here’s Chad’s life being married to someone who is going… So right now, I should start with where I’m at with my PhD phase. I have written my proposal, and now there are five more steps before I can start doing my research, and that’s getting it past my second committee member, which I’m working on… I’ve turned it in, my first committee member has signed off on it. My second committee member has given me feedback and sent it back to me. I’m working on fulfilling all of that feedback. I may or may not need to do a second round of that. I’ve never had to do more than two, knock on wood, for the feedback. And then after that, it goes to the IRB committee member, which is the independent review board, which is made up of a panel of people that say yay or nay. And then it goes to ethics, and then it goes to form and style, and then it goes to the defense board, and then I do an oral defense, which I have to make a PowerPoint presentation for. And then if that’s approved, if all of those things are approved, then I am officially a PhD candidate and I can do my research.

C:

You’re officially a PhD candidate now, because you became officially a candidate when you completed all of your coursework and they signed off that you were free to start on your dissertation.

K:

As Chad would think.

C:

I would think.

K:

Yeah. But Walden has different rules, specifically of when you can call yourself a PhD candidate, and that’s specifically when you have an approved proposal.

C:

Oh, okay. And don’t you have a URR thing in there somewhere too?

K:

Yeah. So after the IRB, then the URR happens and ethics happen. So however many steps that was. So basically at each step, I have a meltdown and I freak out for three days and I want to drop out. And so randomly at undetermined times, Chad has to deal with me having a complete meltdown and just being mean, I mean just mean. Mean like a junkyard dog. Chad can do no right and everything is Chad’s fault. That’s sums up pretty right?

C:

That sums it up, although I work in a dedicated office space and you have… I think it’s been years since you came in while I was working to tell me what a crap person I was for not understanding what you’re going through.

K:

During my PhD, I haven’t done that during my PhD ever.

C:

Okay, yeah.

K:

Because you have your PhD.

C:

I do, yes.

K:

And I think that should give you some kind of super power to prevent this from happening to me.

C:

Mm-hmm, yeah. I got my PhD in math. They offered me a slot in the superpower program, but I turned them down.

K:

And I’ll always be bitter about that. You should have the superpower of making my PhD easier.

C:

I should, but I don’t.

K:

I have no consideration for your day, what your day has been. So I leave Chad alone during the specific working hours. But once those work hours are over, I just rain hell down for three or four days. It’s about three or four days, right?

C:

That’s right, yeah.

K:

Before I come back to myself, because the feedback is devastating. It devastates me. It rocks me to my core. And I’m dyslexic, and my second committee member does not know that I’m dyslexic, so I literally cannot read the feedback. For me to read the feedback, because… it does whack things for me. It might be great for other people, but for me, it’s just whack. I have to have tables inside my document, but while I’m writing the document, I cannot put any tables in because I can’t read it. So when I read scholarly articles that have tables in them, I just skip the tables and don’t look at them at all, because they have no information for me whatsoever. I can’t process the information in a table. So creating tables are the bane of my existence, and my second committee was like, “I want to see these tables.” And I’m like, “But first, I want to get the words approved.” And he was like, “I can’t approve the words until I approve the tables.” And that makes no sense to me, because the tables have the exact same information that are in the words.

C:

Per API requirements.

K:

Yes. There’s no new information in the tables, it’s just proof you can make a table.

C:

Yeah, because you don’t have any stats results yet. So once you have stats results, you will have information in the tables, but then the text is…

K:

And that makes sense to me.

C:

Yeah.

K:

And I told everybody, I’m not doing my APA 7 edit until after the document is approved, because I’ve been working on the document for two years, and it’s like Frankenstein’s monster to me. The parts don’t all quite fit together yet, and that’s get every part approved and then I have to do a final edit. And they’re like, “No, I want you to do APA 7 now. And by the way, this word that you’ve used over 1,000 times but 200 of them are correct, 800 of them are incorrect and I want you to change it to this specific word. And by the way, a term that I forced you to use that you told me was not the right term, I have no recollection that you told me it was the wrong term. So I’m going write a paragraph about how wrong this term is that I forced you to use, and make you use the correct term.” There’s a lot of little stuff like that and every time I come across someone like that, it’s a nuclear exposure in my brain.

C:

Because you go to the receipts and you’re like, “See? Look here. June 21st of 2019, I told them.”

K:

Yes, and that’s the worst habit I have is I will research to prove I’m right and then just get more angry, I just get angrier.

C:

Yeah, not tell them.

K:

Yeah, I don’t say anything to them. I write really shitty responses to comments that I have to go and then take out.

C:

Or sometimes you just write, “Chad, fix this shit.” And then you write the shitty comment.

K:

Yeah. I’m like, “What the fuck is this bullshit? It’s wrong. I’m not this. They can fuck off.” So the reason that that’s not cheating is that they know that Chad edits my stuff, and if they don’t understand the sentence that I’ve written, I’m like, “Chad, can you write this in an intelligible way for them? Because I’ve written it the best I can.” And so those types of things happen randomly and crash into Chad like a rocket ship or like a meteor dropping from the sky.

C:

And editing is no longer my profession, but when it was, I was in charge of ethics compliance for the company and making sure… I know what I’m doing.

K:

My ethics are on fucking point.

C:

No, I’m saying as far as what editors are allowed to do in terms of helping on papers and such.

K:

Yeah. So those types of things, once I settle into writing the feedback and I’m doing okay, and for things that have to be written verbatim because I’m dyslexic, Chad types those things. Because it’s basically coping from one source verbatim into another, so he’s just data entry at that point for me. So all of those types of things are nuclear bomb things, and you have meetings on meetings on meetings on meetings.

C:

I do, yeah.

K:

That’s your work life, meetings.

C:

Yeah, so I don’t usually talk about my work, but I had agreed to before we started this.

K:

Yes.

C:

So I am a senior manager at the 2021 Best Place to Work in Australia for the company size, which is between 50 and 100 employees. And so most of my week is meetings with other managers, with the people who work in my department, with different executives, is mostly meetings. If I want a day without meetings, I have to schedule a meeting for myself so that everybody knows they can’t schedule meetings with me. I like it, but it does mean that I’m not very interruptable during the day most days.

K:

Yeah. And there’s more going on at your work. Your in a promotion cycle, and a promotion cycle means that we need to spend at least one hour a day after work debriefing. And the past week, we haven’t been able to do that because I have just not been fit. I have not been fit to live with the past week, and I’m just so sorry about that. The feedback just brings me low, man. Brings me low. I know I’m smart and I know I’m doing a good job and that it’s well written, but when you eviscerate it and then write, “But don’t worry, I think you’re smart and you’re a good writer,” then why did you eviscerate me?

C:

See for me, I think the evisceration… maybe because I’ve been an editor, I think the evisceration is fine. But why did you have to reassure me that I’m smart? Why are you reassuring me that I’m doing a good job? I thought that before you said so.

K:

Yeah, and as soon as you say it, now I doubt it.

C:

Yeah.

K:

And I’ll be honest, I don’t trust my second committee member. I don’t think they have my best interests at heart.

C:

I feel like the, “Don’t worry, you’re doing a good job,” is the academic version of, “I’m not high.”

K:

Yeah. I immediately suspect you’re high.

C:

Right.

K:

And I know you’re not, and I’m wondering, “Did you take medication?” As soon as you said that, that was my first thought, “Did you take medication?” And I think it comes from me being a therapist for so long. Usually, the things that people come in complaining about or that people come in proclaiming that they are not is usually what they are. And so for me, if someone says “I trust you” in a therapy session, I think they don’t trust me and they’re trying to convince themselves to, and we unpack that. And I don’t feel trusted by my committee member or my second committee member at all. And they sent me a PhD that won an award that was not written to the standards that they are making me write, and I was really shocked and I just wondered, “Did they trust this person more?” And I admit that for…

K:

So the problem is is that I’m at a university that specialized in qualitative research, and I’m doing quantitative research. So qualitative research is interviews and talking to people, and lots of feeling and emotive words, and quantitative research is heavy in statistics. And I am doing one of the most complex statistical models. There is no one who has ever done the research I’m doing at the university I’m at, including my second committee member. My second committee member suggested a book on it but hasn’t read the book yet, at least the 2018 version. So I am the only person who actually understands what it is I’m doing and why I’m doing it, and the literature that says I should do it. So they’re having to learn as I’m turning in each thing.

C:

That’s been a bit rough, especially because what you’re doing is highly technical in a stat sense, and I-

K:

Yeah. But it’s super easy in a research sense.

C:

Right. So I dared to say, “Oh, you’re doing this,” and named the general structure of the thing you’re saying.

K:

Oh, I will bite your face off.

C:

Well, but this time you trusted me, so you sent it to your security committee member, and they bit your face off.

K:

Yes.

C:

They were like, “You are not doing that.” And then page two of the book they recommended for the thing you are doing is like, this is a form of the thing I said. I was right, I know a little bit about math and statistics.

K:

Right now in the feedback, I’m having to go in and find specific pages where it says what I’m doing is what I say I’m doing, because they’re saying that I’m not doing it. Because they don’t actually know what I’m doing.

C:

And folks, let me tell you, Kisstopher’s doing what Kisstopher says is being done.

K:

Yes. They don’t know enough to know what they don’t know. They know just enough to know that they think they know everything, and that’s a little bit tiresome for me. So in this, I have to literally be smarter than my security committee member and my first committee member. I actually have to know it better than them, which ironically is the standard stuff by Walden to get a PhD from the university. And you all can google it and tell me my PhD ain’t shit, this, that, or the other, but it is, and I will have a PhD that is recognized globally. Because I had someone come for me like that. They’re like, “You’re going to an online university.” I did my in-person portion already and I have an in-person portion that I had to do for the APA, and it’s APA accredited. And if you feel the need to put down someone’s university that they went to, just remember some of the stupidest people in the world went to Harvard. You can buy your way into Harvard, so there. Suck it.

C:

And for context, in world rankings, the place where I got my PhD is ranked higher than the place where you got your PhD.

K:

Yeah, where I’m getting my PhD.

C:

However, if we were to go to Germany after you get your PhD, you would be automatically entitled to be called doctor.

K:

Yes.

C:

I would have to petition the German government to be called doctor because my degree is from a Japanese university.

K:

Yes.

C:

So it’s always a matter of perspective, always. And it always comes down to the individual research. I know enough PhDs who don’t know what they’re talking about or who do know what they’re talking about and lie. But just because somebody has doctor in front of their name or PhD after it does not mean they know what they’re talking about, even in their area of expertise.

K:

So the kick in the pants for all of this is when I started this process, I was going to be a therapist forever and now I am a withered Victorian child who is bedridden, and I don’t like doing online therapy or e-therapy at all, at all, at all. It’s just not the same quality for me, it’s not the same experience for me if it’s not done in person. And looking at here we are in September and I’m still not better, I am still… my sleep is irregular, my [inaudible 00:17:33] are still kicking my buns, and I can’t promise that I won’t faint at any given moment. So that means looking at the rest of 2022 for sure, I’m not going to be doing therapy, and it looks like at least for the first half of 2023. And I’m not sure… I’m talking with my doctors now to see if they want to do any more surgeries, and looking at my test results, they’re not really sure where my organs stand in terms of am I in the early stages of organ failure or can I quickly rehabilitate. Because the surgery that I had six months ago… no, four months ago? Six months ago?

C:

March.

K:

Five months ago really did a doozy. The anesthesia and everything really did a doozy on my liver and kidneys, and so they’re just looking at the way that they’re healing and seeing if that started a phase one organ failure. So we’re working out all of that because if I’m in stage one organ failure, I’m not physically healthy and able to do therapy, because then there’s a whole swath of topics I can’t cover, and a lot of my clients come to see me for medical stuff that they’re dealing with. And I would become the topic of therapy, and it happens sometimes, but I don’t like when it happens. So I won’t be doing therapy probably at least for another year at this point. And I’m keeping my office, there’s still hope, and right now we’re just using my old therapy offices as our Cinnabar Moth offices, which is really nice, and I’ll do a tour of how I changed things around. Like okay, if you’ve ever been to my office for therapy, I didn’t change anything around. But if you haven’t been to my office for therapy, then I do a tour.

C:

Then it’s all new to you.

K:

Yeah, and I do tour of how I changed things around and I’ll put it up on Instagram or something for you all to see. I’ll put it up on the Cinnabar Moth Instagram. So you being in a promotion phase and us needing to do daily debriefs, what’s that like for you mentally, sleep wise, all of that kind of stuff? And do you have nuclear bomb days that you just come and blow up my day?

C:

I think I have slow burn days more so than bomb days, where I’m just seething for no particular reason. I mean, there is a particular reason, the particular reason is that when I have a certain type of seizure, it just makes me angry. That’s the effect of it, for no underlying reason. So yeah, I definitely have those days where you can’t do anything right. I think they’re less frequent, but more surprising, because with yours it’s like, “Okay, Kisstopher got feedback today. Today is going to be a bad day.”

K:

It’s going to be a bad week.

C:

And my days might be like, “Everything went fantastic at work and they told me how much they loved me and how I contribute to the success, and this is all due to me.” And ooh…

K:

How dare they.

C:

Right?

K:

How dare they.

C:

So I feel like I am more erratic in that regard. Less frequent, but more erratic. And I think I would find that tougher to deal with than your pattern.

K:

So with that, that’s why we do the debrief at the end of the day, is to reinforce positive feedback. Because with the seizures, you have memory issues.

C:

Definitely, yes.

K:

And your seizure… specifically emotional memory issues, so what happens with Chad’s seizure is that whatever emotions that seizure causes, that becomes Chad’s emotional memory of what it was. So sometimes Chad gets… I’m trying to drop the he from my vocabulary. Chad says it’s okay, but he’s enby and I should respect that. We all should work and do better.

C:

I think the non-binary and having he/him pronouns are not incompatible. I feel like… Yeah.

K:

I want to just call you Chad, because I’m agender.

C:

That’s cool.

K:

And I don’t want to do pronouns.

C:

Okay.

K:

This is my personal journey.

C:

Rock your personal journey.

K:

Thank you. We all have our own journeys to take, this is mine.

C:

Yes.

K:

As someone who’s agendered and just Kisstopher, this is mine. So I think that it’s important that we don’t let that seizure emotional memory imprint and I don’t always catch it if last week, we kind of collided, where you’re having a bad seizure week, I’m having a feedback week, and your needs weren’t met at all last week.

C:

Yeah, it’s tricky because the only thing that I’ve ever found that works for my seizures is CBD. But all of the medical studies of it are like, “Take between 5 and 50mg per kg per day,” which if I take the low end of that, the 5mg per kilogram per day, I’m fat, so that means that I would need to take five times the amount that I take now. I’d be taking a bottle every five days, at $200 a bottle. That’s really expensive and the 150 that I take works pretty well most of the time.

K:

Well, even if you were taking the higher dosage, you would not be seizure free.

C:

No, I wouldn’t. That’s the thing though, they’re like, “Well, you’re-

K:

Because we tried it.

C:

I haven’t ever tried the amount they recommend, just because…

K:

You’ve tried higher doses.

C:

I’ve tried higher doses, yeah. So that can be frustrating. One nice thing is that you are very supportive. Another nice thing is that my job knows, I’m completely open with them about the fact that I have epilepsy, that I’m autistic, that I have ankylosing spondylitis. And it’s been nice that they have reacted so positively and I’ve been able to push for… not changes, but just clarification of company stuff. I am not taking credit for the decision, but I suggested, “Hey, we should make sure people know that they don’t have to take time off to get their vaccination, that they can go get their vaccination on company time, and that if they have side effects, that they won’t count against their sick leave.” And then the company announced in the company daily newsletter, “Hey, if you’re going to get your COVID vaccination, let your manager know you’re going to be gone, but you don’t have to take that as time off. If you have side effects, you don’t have to take it as time off to deal with those.”

K:

So with the daily debriefs and the stress and anxiety of going for another promotion… Sorry, not with, without the daily debriefs and the stress of going for a promotion, and feeling like you’re going through it on your own and by yourself, it increases your seizures.

C:

Yeah, it does.

K:

And it makes things a lot harder for you. And a lot of people might be like, “Well, you’re going through your own thing and you’re not always going to have time for Chad, and that’s just a natural part of life.” And I’m like, “Manage your own marriage. My deal is that Monday through Friday, I’m supposed to make anywhere between one to three hours available to Chad to discuss work. That’s the deal.” And I don’t think it’s a bad deal, I don’t think it’s a rough deal, I think there are just some days I don’t live up to my part of that deal.

C:

Because I’m a people manager, I think of it like when I talk to the people who are my… direct reports, which I guess I don’t mind that term too much. And they say, “Hey, I have these different projects going on and I can’t do all of them at once.” It’s like, “No, you can’t, so here’s the priority list and do your best to keep this priority.” And I think I’m a pretty good manager. My reviews are good. But I think that everybody’s got competing priorities, and there’s always enough available to fill your entire day, no matter how many priorities you take off of it.

K:

Yeah. So another thing that’s a part of my priorities is Cinnabar Moth, the publishing house that we started. And there’s a lot of things that we just don’t have that we need to have that’s part of the finishing touches, so to speak, for the press. And one of that is a catalog. You need a catalog of all of your titles, but for me, it was I had to wait until we had enough covers of enough titles to make a catalog.

C:

Yeah, “Here’s our catalog of two books.”

K:

Yeah, it just doesn’t-

C:

“Here’s our catalog of three books.” Now that we have the covers for many of the upcoming books.

K:

We have six and we’re getting a seventh.

C:

Yeah.

K:

So I was able to finish the 2021 catalog and we’ve divided up to early, mid, and year-end wrap up. And so we’ll update the catalog three times a year, which I feel is reasonable, and put that on the websites, in addition to the catalog which we launched earlier in September, and we also launched the newsletter, we’re doing a monthly newsletter. And I feel like the press needs a monthly newsletter and it needs a catalog, but I just didn’t have time, and I didn’t have anything to put in a newsletter. I’m grinding, that’s what I would have put. I’m grinding, I’m trying to sign authors.

C:

Every day you’re hustling?

K:

Yeah, I’m hustling, that’s what I’m doing. But now that we have titles coming out well into 2023, there’s lots of stuff to talk about. There’s lots of things to put in a newsletter that’s exciting. And introducing the people that we work with and I was able to map out and plan a year’s worth of newsletters because that’s the way my brain works. I have to be able to do something for a year. If I have a year of ideas for something, I think it can be successful. So I think after a year, it becomes self-generating, but the first year can be really hard, for me, idea wise. For us now, you all know, I think you all can tell we just get on the mic and we’re not as planned as we were when we first started. Now, I plan maybe three or four topics ahead and that’s about it. I don’t do the year ahead anymore, because it’s more topical and we’re also more comfortable sharing our personal lives in what’s going on. So the newsletter was not my dream, it was Chad’s dream. So why don’t you talk about why you feel the press needs a newsletter? Because I still don’t know why. I’m making it, I’m happy to make it, I think it’s gorgeous. What’s going on with that?

C:

I think what’s going on with that is that the people have a right to know that you should “buy now, our new book!” Which is part of it, is to advertise the new books. And I think there are people who…

K:

But that’s not at all the newsletter I created.

C:

No, but you asked me why I thought. You didn’t ask me why you did the newsletter the way you did, because on that, I would turn around and say, “Why did you, Kisstopher?”

K:

You love it. You think it’s gorgeous.

C:

I do.

K:

Go to cinnabarmoth.com if you want to check out the newsletter we’re talking about.

C:

Yeah, I do. But my idea…

K:

It’s stunning.

C:

My idea was that we are going to be publishing nearly monthly and we should advertise those new books to people who follow the press, because they are varied in topic and genre and such, but they all have key touch points to them. And there are people who have expressed that they like what comes out of Cinnabar Moth and they buy 80% of the new books.

K:

Yeah. And for me, what was the tipping point was I’ve gotten a lot of requests for a newsletter and a lot of requests for a catalog. And people have requested the types of things they’d like to see in it. And I let our audience dictate how the newsletter’s written and that-

C:

The market. We let the market control.

K:

I don’t like saying the market, because it’s much more intimate than that.

C:

Okay.

K:

The Cinnabar Moth Twitter, I run it. And it’s really intimate. It’s as intimate as the Musicks in Japan, but with a different flavor. Because it’s just me, it’s not me and you and I don’t think I talk about my obsession with raspberries on it, although I may have.

C:

I don’t think you have.

K:

I think I may have, because I’m fairly obsessed with raspberries. And when they’re in season, I’m like, “I’m having a raspberry party.” But lately I’ve been eating massive amounts of watermelon. It’s all I eat now is watermelon, because it’s September and it’s still hot, and the watermelon’s going rancid. And so I have to switch to vegetables, which… I eat almost all fruit or all vegetable, and then I eat protein when I have to.

C:

I’m hoping for the autumn harvest of strawberries.

K:

Not so much.

C:

No?

K:

No, I know I ate the strawberries and enjoyed them when they were in season, but I don’t know if I’m doing the late… because I’m already starting to feel… because my mind is switching already over veggies. I’m already feeling the craving for veggies. So I think after I eat this haul of watermelon, the last watermelon of the season… because it really just mush.

C:

You’re going to be like, “It’s broccoli time.”

K:

No, I’m going to be like, “It’s veggie time.”

C:

It’s not broccoli time?

K:

Yeah, not just broccoli.

C:

Okay.

K:

I like broccoli, cauliflowers, zucchini. I can’t think of a vegetable I don’t like.

C:

So you like some veggies and some fruits, because zucchini is a fruit.

K:

Yes. Eye roll.

C:

Thank you for the eye roll, I like to know that…

K:

Yes, yes. Because major eye roll. Now that the press has the newsletter and it has the catalog, and it has the writer’s triangle podcast, I don’t feel like it needs anything else. I feel like it’s enough. The website is done. We need to fine tune some things, but I feel like it’s done. I feel like it has all of the content it needs.

C:

I feel like that too.

K:

I think the content can be made prettier and more aesthetically pleasing but that tit’s done. So we’ve been working a lot on that, and we’ve been working on a website that we’re going to be launching soon for the e-zine. And so we’re onto the e-zine.

C:

On August, I was working-

K:

I don’t know, should I tell the Musick Notes the surprise before everyone else?

C:

I don’t think so.

K:

You don’t think so?

C:

No.

K:

Why not? Ooh, we could talk about it on the Patreon.

C:

Yes, that’s right.

K:

There’s a surprise and if you sign up to our Patreon, you’ll know what the surprise is. But working on it has been really hard, and we’re launching two awards this year, one for writing, one for poetry. Because I review a lot of poetry, and I think some of it should be award-winning poetry. And launching all of those different things that go along with the press has been really time-consuming, expensive, and taken a lot of creativity and time on my part. And onboarding new employees… and you all know, I do not like being a boss. So that’s put Rasta in charge of the team, and that’s a little bit challenging for the team, because Rasta’s 27 and there’s some people that are older and more experienced in what they’re doing, but Rasta has final say.

C:

I feel like this age thing is just a yip that people should get over. Everybody on my team at work is younger than me, but before I was promoted, my boss was younger than me. That wasn’t an issue. There’s a certain point at which I think you say, “Okay, this person has enough know what they’re doing to effectively lead.”

K:

But it’s cultural for our Japanese team members.

C:

Yeah, but it’s also cultural to have an unofficial retirement, where you just keep going to work for 15 years and don’t do anything.

K:

Yeah, and that’s not going down.

C:

Right. So I think we’re very clear with everybody that we’re not running it like a Japanese company, and that has good aspects and that has bad aspects, and which one is which depends on your perspective.

K:

Yeah. Rasta had the experience of having to let go an employee, and that was really hard, really hard on him. And then he also had the experience of us internally debating about whether or not we were going to fire an employee, and then deciding not to fire the employee. And for him, it was like, “I don’t care, whatever. I don’t care.” The firing was a big deal, but the decision and the process of how to decide when to fire someone and when not to fire someone, it’s really… everyone knows don’t trust my judgment when I’ve just feedback. I want to fire everybody. I want to fire myself. I want just get up and walk out of my life. So everyone knows like, “Okay, just say yes, then don’t act on it.” It’s the rule and what I’ve asked everyone to do. But when we do have to seriously fire someone… and if you’re still on the team, I’m not talking about you. This is not forecasting someone’s going to be fired, this is someone has been fired and if you’re part of the team, you already know who that person is, if you’re part of the office team. If you’re part of the external team or the talent team, it was nobody in talent. It was none of the talent. I’m not talking about any of the talent.

C:

That doesn’t mean you’re only talking about the talentless, everybody’s got their own talents.

K:

I divide people into nuts and bolts and talent. And we have to let go of somebody that was doing nuts and bolts.

C:

Yes.

K:

Lower level employee that we were hoping it would work out. So onboarding and off boarding employees and onboarding and off boarding authors is really difficult, and having authors threaten me and they’re going to come for me, and this, that, and the other was quite shocking. And having to deal with the emotional fallout of that, because it was actually really traumatizing to have someone threaten me. And the reason it was traumatizing is because you Musick Notes know that I have violence in me.

C:

Yes.

K:

And I work really hard to not express that violence. And I was like, “Ooh.” And then Chad was like, “No.” And I was like, “What? They just opened a whole can of whoop ass and I’m about to whoop their ass.” And Chad was like, “That’s not who you are.” I’m like, “Oh, but it is.” And I can’t pass them over to you, because you’re not dealing with it.

C:

No, I’m not.

K:

So how do you prevent that feeling? Because you feel it too, if someone attacks your wife, and you want to open a can of whoop ass. And I’m like, “No, this is my thing to handle,” but then you don’t want me to open a can of whoop ass because we’re trying to take the pain out of publishing, right? We’re trying to make publishing kinder, gentler, more responsive to writer’s needs and all of those kinds of things, which I think comes from me being a therapist. But some of the authors want to use that approach, that compassion approach to publishing as a way to abuse me, or as an excuse for me to accept their abuse.

C:

I feel like for me, that’s never a one time thing with authors. And I have seen multiple authors who have approached you that way flame out very publicly.

K:

Yeah, and get blocked.

C:

And get blocked not just by you, but get blacklisted by a large part of the industry because…

K:

Not from anything I’ve said.

C:

No, just because of their public behavior.

K:

Yeah, because everyone’s like, “Whoa.” Because I think what people don’t realize is that in the presses, we’re not at each other’s throats.

C:

No.

K:

We follow each other, we support each other, we retweet each other, we put each other on follow lists and we DM a lot. There are several presses that I speak to members of their teams almost every day.

C:

And I think that we have been open about the fact that we are losing money on the press at the moment. We anticipate it being profitable, we have the business plan and all of that. But what it means is that most indie presses are profitable when they are because they make good decisions, and one disastrous decision can take them from profitable to money losing. And so if you present your-

K:

Yeah. And that’s true for almost any press.

C:

Yeah.

K:

They’re just a few bad decisions away from ruin.

C:

So if you, as an author, present yourself as there’s a 50% chance that it’s going to be great and a 50% chance I’m going to blow up all over everything, and cost you a lot in legal fees and time, and hassle and harass all of your authors-

K:

And damage to your brand.

C:

Yeah.

K:

You’re backing this person?

C:

Yeah, you become, “Oh, you’re the press that publishes Nazis.”

K:

Yeah.

C:

So I think that authors burn themselves, and that’s why I don’t feel…

K:

And we have had straight up Nazis submit to a majority black-owned press. What are you thinking? Why are you doing that? I’m not going to publish you. I don’t care how much I like your book, I’m not going to publish you. I’m not doing anything to make your life better. And people think that they’re slick, because they’ll clean up their social media, but they don’t understand the internet is forever. Forever.

C:

And they don’t understand that comes across in the writing. And I don’t know how writers don’t understand that, but your perspective always comes across in your writing. And the authors haven’t paid for 10 rounds of editing to sanitize their book. They may have paid to sanitize their social media.

K:

But if you’re a nazi, someone has screen shotted.

C:

Absolutely, yes.

K:

And there are services that… I don’t know if people are aware of this or not, but there are five services that I know of, probably more, that keep a record of all tweets on twitter, even deleted tweets. So you can go into these services, you can put someone’s username and find out. And if somebody has a really young account, I’m squinting at them. I’m looking at them sideways. Like, “You just joined Twitter this week when you submitted? Hmm. But did you really though?” And you can tell people that know how to use Twitter and people that don’t know how to use Twitter. So I’m just saying, I don’t want to publish Nazis and I’m not going to. I don’t post Nazis. And if you’re someone who’s been rejected, I’m not calling you a nazi. But if you’re that nazi, [inaudible 00:43:39] several Nazis.

C:

You know who you are.

K:

You’re a nazi.

C:

Okay?

K:

So there’s a lot coming at me from all kinds of different friends, and there’s a lot coming at Chad from all kinds of different fronts, but they all feel like good things. Good stress. Good stress feels exactly like bad stress.

C:

It does. There is no difference in the bodily reaction.

K:

Yeah. So how are you dealing with all of your stress?

C:

I sleep a lot.

K:

Truth. And I don’t sleep at all. People have been asking me, “When do you sleep?” I don’t. Isn’t it obvious?

C:

Yeah, somebody told me, “Kisstopher’s on late at night.” I’m like, “Yes.” They’re like, “But why?” I’m like, “Not your business.”

K:

Because I have insomnia from all the stress, all the positive stress. Because I’ll be tweeting from 10:00 pm Japan time until 7:00 am Japan time, and then I’ll go off, and then I’ll come back on at 10:00 AM Japan time, just to pretend I’ve slept sometimes. Sometimes I fake sleep, you heard it here first. So today, we’re going to go on over to the take two, and we’re not going to talk about the surprise on take two, because we actually have that scheduled as a take two later. And you know me, I don’t like to switch things around. You all know I don’t like change that much.

K:

So the take two this week is going to be how we make decisions about what to add to the press and what not to add to the press. So we talked about the things that we’ve added, and if you want to know how we made the decision of what the press needs and what the press doesn’t need in a business sense, follow us on over to the take two and yeah, we appreciate that. We love all of our Musick Notes. And if you go on over to the take two… Yes, I’m making my Patreon pitch again. You’ll have over 100 things that you can read and listen to. You can entertain yourself for weeks. So if you’re on your 20th round of lockdowns, why not spend three bucks and just consume everything that’s on our Patreon?

C:

Exactly. Thank you. Yes.

K:

I think it’s a great way to spend time.

C:

Absolutely.

K:

Hang out with us.

C:

Okay?

K:

Because we adore you, we know you’ll be in a loving, safe place. So we hope you follow us on over to the take two. If not, thank you for listening and we’ll talk to you next week. Bye.

C:

Bye.