Flirtin' with Freelance Disaster

Well I'm travelin' down the road,
I'm flirtin' with disaster.
I've got the pedal to the floor,
My life is running faster.
I'm out of money, out of hope,
It looks like self-destruction.
Well, how much more can we take,
With all of this mass corruption.

When I'm not listening to books on tape during my commute from the Detroit area to Ann Arbor, I get myself pumped up for the day using my poor-man's iPod: Mixed music tapes, some of which are so old and muffled-sounding I think they date back to my high school years ('79-'83). I'm a believer in the power and meaning of randomness, and so it really did not surprise me when Molly Hatchet's "Flirtin' With Disaster," circa 1970-whatever, was the next song up when I popped the tape in on the Walter Reuther Freeway this morning, on my way to my last day of work at Small Times.

I left Small Times Media today when my position as news editor was eliminated as part of a reorganization.

However, I plan on continuing the work I began at the magazine and Web site three years ago. There is still a great deal to build for the future – for my family and for this small, but wide-open, subject that I write about.

I've collected a great deal of information and insight about nanotechnology's political, cultural, financial and scientific progress over the past three years, so don't count on me tossing it all away and going back to a newspaper copy desk. I'm organizing the notes I've collected these past three years – three very key years in the history of nanotechnology – and I have a pretty compelling story to tell.

If you're a book publisher and are interested in reading about what I saw at the nanotechnology revolution, or if you're a magazine editor who needs an expert analyst, commentator or straight news professional, please let my nanosecretary show you in to my office.

Here's what I do: I tell stories. I tell them simply. And I tell them in a way that is understandable to the industry's real business and financial leaders – the average consumer, the average voter, the average investor, the average reader. They are my true bosses and, ultimately, they will dictate the future course of nanotechnology as a science, an industry, an idea.

Ya'll damn sure know what I mean.