But the most important thing is to do what you want, on your own terms, not because people demand it of you. (I've never called myself that, heh, but it's accurate). It can be overwhelming to be a multi-hyphenate. What advice would you give to someone who feels overwhelmed by the thought of being a multi-hyphenate creator? You're someone who does many things very well. I have several computers and they all have the same content on them because of Dropbox, and I know there is also that work living quietly and safely in the cloud. It makes so much of that process seamless. Since then I've made backups and backups of the backups and I am so grateful for Dropbox. It became a wake-up call to care enough about my work to find ways to back it up. It felt like a setback but looking back, it really wasn't.
I was just writing and reading and submitting my work in the old-fashioned way we used to do it-envelopes and stamps and a whole lot of waiting. I was a young, broke writer who couldn't afford a new computer and had no writing career to speak of. All my writing, the random things I'd been composing for years and years, gone.
What's a file that you've lost before you had Dropbox, that you wish you could get back?Īt some point in my twenties, before I had any kind of money and couldn't afford, like, a Zip drive, I once lost everything in a hard-drive crash. If you had told me 20 years ago that it would be this easy to have access to files and so on, I would not have believed it. It's such a small marvel every time I open up a device and go to Dropbox, et voila, what I need, at my fingertips. Having access to everything I am working on, on every device from my laptop to my desktop to my iPad to my phones is incredible.
When I need a file or a piece of research or to send a headshot or a podcast episode, Dropbox can make any and all of it happen in seamless, intuitive ways. It is taking time but I am finding ways to re-prioritize writing as the most important thing I do, because it is learning to say no and hold that line and making time and space for leisure, for doing nothing at all if I so choose.ĭropbox facilitates nearly everything I do. Oddly enough, the pandemic was a wake-up call that I work way too much and spend my time doing too much of everything but writing. How has your relationship to work changed as we continue to navigate the pandemic? I always learned new things from her and I still do. We co-hosted a podcast for two years and I really appreciated the different energies we brought to Hear to Slay.
I also love working with Tressie McMillan Cottom. She has a fierce imagination and we complement each other in great ways. My favorite person to collaborate with is probably my wife. Who is your favorite person to collaborate with and why? My imagination takes that fuel and, on good days, makes really interesting work with it. Reading always fuels my desire to think better, write better, and create more. Gay tells us how Dropbox helps her work, when she recognized she needed to get back to “the most important thing I do,” and what her best advice for dealing with overwhelm as a multi-hyphenate creator is.Īll I need to be creative is my imagination and books. (Dropbox is also the home for all of her personal work.) The ability to seamlessly collaborate across different projects and devices lets her focus more time on her own writing rather than project management. That’s why Dropbox is such an integral tool for her. Paradoxically, the more opportunities words have given her, the less time Gay has to actually write for herself.