Hello there. I’ve been ruminating on what stands behind the word “Yes” around the topic of jobs and such. (On the relationship front, I could spin stories on the motivation underneath that response for pages and maybe someday will since I don’t think they’re so dissimilar.) The phrases “Sure, I’ll do that,” “Yes, I’d love to,” “Who me? Well of course, I’ll try it” come to mind as ones that more often than not are uttered even as my brain is screaming “Wait? What? I’m not equipped for that.” Then I’ll go ahead and do the thing anyway, ignoring the banshee in my head.

There’s a syndrome (imposter) and a rhyming-slangy saying (“fake it til you make it”) attached to this phenomenon and I’m pretty certain that everyone reading this has felt it at least one or a few times in their life. Thinking back to when I first noticed the Yes propelling out of my mouth while my innards flipped in fear of discovery, I know I was skating on different ice. Wanting to be accepted (looking at you middle and high school), needing money (hello, waitressing), craving something new (ah, a New York state of mind). As I got older, the idea of Yes took on a different kind of import. Writing and music, I’ll be damned. I wanted the moment to happen. I wanted to burrow forward inside that life. If I kept on moving quickly and just kept saying “Sure,” “Yeah,” “Bring It” maybe no one would notice I wasn’t qualified—at least that’s how I felt about it/me. Just move so fast, look-shiny-object diversions and I’m in. That’s how I felt about getting the job at SPIN. When the owner, Bob Gucciione Jr., asked if I could do the job of senior editor–a position I’d never held and which would skip me a couple of steps over more entry-level jobs in preparation–I said, “Would love to.” Being a copy editor at Rolling Stone really didn’t at all qualify me for the gig. The underlying message there was: Bob loved to take people from Rolling Stone. At least that’s what I told myself. Once I’d gotten the job though, I had to figure out how to do it. Of course, the job was my dream: rock’n’roll adjacent combined with putting my journalism degree to use. Great.

While the thrill of getting the thing never really faded, the actual asking for help part never seemed available. Or rather, I never made it available. I never asked “How, exactly, should this go?” I’ve also got reams of writing on the gendered bits inside music journalism and how in my career during the late eighties into the nineties women were not so present as helpmates. There were very few to be found at Rolling Stone in the editorial hallways and the only other woman writer-editor at SPIN did not cover music and was dating Bob, so I didn’t feel she was available for questions around the topic of How to do this job. The creeping sense was that each of us filled a quota and our position had to be guarded like Beyonce’s beauty secrets, which are maybe more readily available than advice from fellow female music staff editors was at the time. And there were no internets, so… if there was a group meeting somewhere sharing tips, I never found it.

Just Do It, the phrase somehow coincided with that damn Nike ad. Hence one month in at SPIN and I got my first feature assignment to fly to London and interview the Cure. About that, I felt both exuberant and unwell. Triumphant and terrified. First off, I loved the Cure in a pretty average way. I recognized their place in the pantheon of English music of the eighties who, when I was growing up in SoCal, fell into the category of “crying in the sunshine” bands whose lyrics were deep and music hypnotic in a thoroughly submersive way. They lived alongside the Smiths in my album collection (truth, I loved the Smiths more). But hell, I was going on my first overseas assignment. Put up in a hotel and given a chance to flash my SPIN press pass around. I also had to do a thorough interview with a man (Robert Smith, singer-lyricist, guitarist) whose reputation for shyness was well known. I would have rather Robert Plant or even Robert Palmer, both of whom I would have had ready-made questions for, although in retrospect the latter wouldn’t have worked because I had zero real feels for his music and the former because I had too much.

But yet, I’d work it out. And I wouldn’t ever, under any circumstances, tell anyone how nervous I was. Once in London, I bounced around on my hotel room bed, went down to the pub, had a pint, and continued to write out questions in my skinny reporter’s notebook. My assignment was to report on their upcoming club-mix-y album, Mixed Up, which would make a good story because the Cure were not a dance band and so why were they remixing their songs to make them sound like one? I figured I could tease out that question for at least a half-hour, over drinks or something. Unless that line of questioning made Robert or the band upset, in which case I would need to shift into some sort of sure-I-get-it mode and we could make fun of dance music. But then I’d need to spin that into a story about how dance music is really okay in the end because of course the record company would be annoyed if we dissed the music they were releasing on their label, and they’d paid for this trip. You see the web I was weaving. And all that depended on the fact that the band would talk to me at all. Who was to say they (or Robert) wouldn’t take one look at me and say out loud, “What, her? No bloody way she’s qualified to talk to us.” Then I’d have to leave and would get fired. It was all trouble.

Not to mention, I hadn’t been told yet the when and where of our interview. I’m a morning person, by the way. The time was set for midnight. A car would pick me up. It would take me to a sound stage where the band were shooting a video. There would be no libations. or food. No distractions like that. Also, I’d be in the dressing room where they would sometimes be together but mostly not as each band member would be doing some video thing at different times and I’d just need to get what I could.

Sure, no problem, I told the publicist. No, I didn’t actually say, Hey, I need at least thirty minutes of us all in one place. And I’d like a beer. But nevermind. I turned up. The place was freezing, as soundstages usually are, though how would I know that. I was underdressed. I walked into the dressing room for introductions and Robert Smith was in his boxer shorts mid costume change. This felt awkward. I looked away while introducing myself, then felt rude, tried to decide where my eyes should look, and put out my hand as a hello gesture in the way I’d been taught was proper. I didn’t curtsy or anything, that would have been weird. He did not shake my hand, mostly because he was putting on a shirt and needed both of his for that. He nodded and mumbled hello. I think it was hello given the playback from the video shoot was pounding through the walls. It became immediately clear what the main problem would be. That I wouldn’t be able to hear him. He was soft-spoken in the best of times and it didn’t appear he would be the type to shout to be heard. I pushed record on my tape recorder, turned up the volume to eleven, and asked the first question, shouty, thinking I might model a vocal level he’d match. He didn’t. I remember the panic rising in me like a high tide. Band members came in and out and I kept asking and recording. I don’t recall having anything witty to say mainly because I don’t think I understood enough of what anyone was saying to respond appropriately. By the time the interview was done, which I only knew because the publicist told me so, I was icy with flop sweat. Disaster. I would return with nothing and be instantly fired. The end of my dream job. The publicist had invited me to a pirate radio event with the band later that night—or rather very early that morning, like in an hour—but I would have no chance to sit down with Robert or the band. It was just for color (or rather colour). As the car took me to the radio event, I madly scribbled whatever I could remember of the pieces of words and such that I’d heard and seen. By the time I was in a chair on the edges of the very small room where two DJs were interviewing Robert—and he was mumbling again, but it was into a microphone—and playing Cure music I began to just get fatalistic. I drank a beer, then three. I would get on a plane and go home at some point in the next eight hours. I’d fake it. Write what I could. Get fired if I must. Yes, I’ll have another beer. Thank you.

Back at the hotel, I rewound the tape and could hear about one out of every ten words. I’d interviewed a couple of fans outside the video location. They sounded swell. I got on the plane and scribbled out some stuff. I went into the office the next day (crazy how that worked. Youth and beer equaled no jet lag?) and wrote something (pg65). My editor didn’t ask for more, just shredded and polished. I gave it a final read and said Yes, done. I never said anything about feeling less than able even though I waited for Bob to call me in and tell me so. Three years later, as I headed out the SPIN’s door for the last time, I’d stopped saying Yes to everything, although I did end up taking my nodding-affirmative situation to another place I wasn’t qualified for. And I didn’t perish literally or in mortification. More on that later.