A thread from Twitter, begun as a simple response to someone else's tweet on Thursday…

Jobs I did before full-time professional* journalism:

Babysitter
Floor cleaning/maintenance
Busboy
Dishwasher
Kitchen prep
Record store clerk
Radio program host
Publicist

(* but also wrote for my college paper and freelanced for alt-weeklies mag long before that…) https://t.co/WrBpsT9mXm

— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) July 12, 2018

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After which came another response to a subsequent tweet on Friday, inspired by the first…

Diligent work at small jobs for low pay, at first. But honestly, I made some very good friends during my seven-year PR detour, and when I returned to journalism, some of those friends opened doors. I owe huge debts to Larry Blumenfeld, Bradley Bambarger, and K. Leander Williams. https://t.co/oCzxYmUAdh

— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) July 13, 2018

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To explain that last sentence: Larry Blumenfeld, during his fondly remembered tenure as editor of Jazziz, hired me to write a handful of small articles while I was working in P.R. – obviously I never wrote about anything remotely related to the clients I represented – and then brought me on as his assistant editor when BMG Classics, the last company at which I held a P.R. job, eliminated my department and laid off most of the staff in 2000. Thanks to Larry, I wasn't unemployed even for a weekend.

Bradley Bambarger brought me back to classical music journalism – and, really, to classical music, period – early in 2001, when he hired me to take over his weekly column about the classical recording industry at Billboard. And K. Leander Williams, who knew me mostly from the jazz world, but also was aware of my classical background and the new Billboard post, passed my name to the powers-that-were at Time Out New York when that magazine was looking for a classical-music editor, also in 2001.

I then added a brief thread later on Friday, expanding upon that second response tweet and taking a little more agency for my route to full-time employment in journalism.

Also! In what amounts to a mix of serendipity, tenacity & chutzpah, I “arrived” during peak years for blogs. So in addition to part- or full-time employment, I blogged frenetically. That gave potential editors and employers something to look at, unfiltered.

— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) July 13, 2018

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Having related employment helped immeasurably – I won’t deny the “legitimizing” effect. But because of blogging, some publications I’d tried unsuccessfully to crack for years eventually came and found me.

— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) July 13, 2018

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Personal blogs may not be as big a deal now, but as an editor I still scan them – and websites, and social media (including Twitter) – for promising new writers to hire.

— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) July 13, 2018

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So while I pretty much will never advocate for writing for someone else for no pay, I am a strong proponent of any aspiring/practicing writer putting her/his words out into the world by any means necessary – through one’s own channels.

— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) July 13, 2018

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A true story. Maybe someday I'll expand on it in prose, but for now, I just wanted to preserve that thread and stick it all in one place.