Penelope Trunk, one of my favorite writers, got fired today. Not a shocker, as the comments from her column on Yahoo! Finance column are overwhelmingly negative. Although she explains it was from some sort of low CPM rating which has nothing to do with the traffic she produced, but how relevant her content was to Yahoo!'s advertisers. Her traffic was high since she is sort of a controversial writer. Either way, her column had little finance-specific advice and, in my opinion wasn’t appropriate for the audience.
My dirty little secret: When I heard the news I was relieved.
Okay, I’ll admit how I felt was closer to glee at first, but please don’t accuse me of being callous. I like her writing style, content, honesty, and hutspa. I don’t actually enjoy the fact that she got fired and now has to worry about her next job, money, etc. That would be cruel. Why the rejoicing? She’s human! Not some genius writing columns, publishing books, working her own hours, while we all wonder to ourselves how she does it and if she’s happy. She tells us. Sometimes she’s happy, sometimes she’s not. She works hard, struggles, wonders, waits, makes mistakes…just like the rest of us. Just like me. She’s breaking my illusions of what being rich and famous are. I don’t know if she really is rich and famous, but a lot of people know who she is and she writes about her six-figure book deals, which is way better than I’m doing.
The reason I was happy was selfish – not because I like seeing people fall – but because I continually struggle with fear of falling and doing everything to avoid falling and…well, she fell and she’s lived to tell the tale. That’s why I’m happy. It’s triumphant! In a way, her failure is a huge success. And I’m going to enjoy seeing what she does next.
So, congrats, Penelope – you are on to better things.
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