What Keeps Me Up at Night

❱Sometimes I need some prompting when trying to write this column, and this time was no exception. Rusty, our intrepid managing editor, posed some topics ranging from a cynical take on today’s political situation to the more germane topic of our latest build for the CarCraftvideo series. Among the suggestions on the list was the question, “What keeps you up at night?” A simple question that’s difficult to answer. Sometimes the easier question to answer would be what doesn’t keep me up at night.

Short answer: lots of things keep me up at night, which has been a problem over the last several months. Some of them are personal and don’t need to be aired out here, but there are plenty of work-related issues that seek to destroy my circadian rhythm. Some of them are just the physical volume of work. Our website needs daily content—a constant flow of feature and technical articles, news items, and personality profiles. Those all need to be assigned, progress monitored, proofread after being received, uploaded to our production servers, input into our web templates, and given final approval before hitting the website. I’m not solely responsible for all those steps, but I am for the majority. That takes a lot of planning and communicating with the staff and our large and growing group of freelance contributors. Freelancers need to be paid, of course, and it’s my responsibility to make sure that happens. I’m also responsible for the freelance budget—begging for more money, then making sure I’m not spending too much. We work with a wide variety of talented writers, photographers, and increasingly these days, videographers and video editors, and that work isn’t cheap.

In broader terms, HOT ROD needs to be flexible and adaptable in today’s changing media landscape. I try to be proactive, rather than reactive, in how we plan our editorial coverage. What events do we cover, what cars do we feature, who shoots and writes it, and how does it get presented online, distributed on social media, and what goes into the print magazine? What is our competition doing, and how do we stack up against them? Finally, is what we are doing profitable? Afterall, we need to make money to pay the bills, keep the lights on, and pay our salaries.

Reviewing all the things I just listed off, one might wonder, “Where’s the burnouts, the driving fast cars? Where’s the fun?” That stuff does happen, for sure, but first and foremost, this is a job; it has ups and downs just like any job. I’m extremely fortunate that it’s a job I love; however. I’ve always loved cars for as long as I can remember. That makes all the Zoom meetings, spreadsheets, and expense reports all worth it. I do make time to enjoy my job and my life, and that’s usually behind the wheel of one of my cars or riding my motorcycle. If you follow my account on Instagram (@john.mcgann) you’ll find my feed full of weekend motorcycle rides or late-night drives in my ’93 GMC or ’67 C10, because that’s where I do some of my best thinking. I went on a long drive in the C10 last night, in fact, and I slept very well afterward.

One final note: I want to thank everyone who took the time to email their feedback and thoughts on what HOT ROD has been covering lately. I’ve read all the messages and am keeping a mental list of all the constructive criticism. Please keep it up! Let us know what you think by emailing us at hotrod@hotrod.com. Please put “Be Heard” or “Yo John!” or something like that in the subject line so we know it’s not spam. Thanks for reading!

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