free girl now

there is much to report from my three days at the coachella valley music and art festival this past weekend. and i will get to it, as soon as i get over this fucking cold i seem to have developed upon returning. but first i need to make an official announcement.

i am no longer the arts editor at l.a. citybeat. i've left the gig but will remain associated with the paper as a freelance columnist and contributor. it is somewhat insane, perhaps, to depart a good job in these sparse times, but i did it anyway. the main reason is that i want to do more writing, and it is difficult to do that when your job requires you to focus on everyone else's work first. there was a time when i could do it all, but i'm not as young as i used to be. and, frankly, i want my hard work to benefit me more directly.

it's sad to leave the daily routine with my peeps on the ed staff, who are some of the finest human beings and hardest workers i know. my former associate arts editor, rebecca "7 days in l.a." epstein, has moved into the arts editor position. a new calendar editor will be named shortly. i was lucky enough to work with some truly fine freelancers (who have already been stroked in a private e-mail, so no need to name names now). i learned a lot from them, and that has always been the thing i enjoy most about being an editor.

but to be totally honest, i'm over the moon about not having to go into an office every day, and escaping the hamster-wheel nature of a weekly publication schedule. i am expecting to get a lot more done now. that may be overly optimistic, but we shall see.