Everyone has that one special blog they visit daily to drift away from reality, get entertained when they need a good laugh or pick-up the relevant news of the day. It is like your warm and fuzzy sweater you wear five times a week or your dog that you cuddle up to every night...a favorite friend you can always turn to to make you feel better and bring a smile to your face.
Go Fug Yourself is that blog for me. If you do not know what Go Fug Yourself is, you have been living under a rock in the middle of nowhere! If you love fashion and you love celebrities, this blog combines the two with the perfect combination of pretty pictures, hilarious commentary and the latest in what is hot and who is not! Named one of the 50 Coolest Websites by Time, not to mention many other accolades, and a loyal fanbase called FugNation, GFY is everyone's guilty pleasure! I love it! I find myself laughing out loud and agreeing with so much of what they say! I feel like I am good friends with Jessica and Heather (the founders/bloggers) - we hang out, drink wine and gossip about all of the badly dressed celebs walking the red carpet.
You can imagine my joy and excitement when Jessica and Heather agreed to be interviewed for this blog! As you know, Inspire Me is all about people doing inspiring things...well these two give me inspiration daily! Not only do they run a highly successful blog, but they just published their first novel - Spoiled - which I am reading now and thoroughly enjoying! Here is the story of Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks and how they came to launch Go Fug Yourself! Enjoy!
1.Tell me a bit about your journey from choosing your careers, what you were happy with and not happy with and what eventually gave you the idea to start Go Fug Yourself. Did you think it would become the success it is?
HEATHER: I graduated college and went straight into journalism -- I was a tech reporter for the daily newspaper in Austin, Texas. Quickly I realized that I loved the writing, but hated the reporting. I don't have a gift for interviewing people, particularly; I get so paranoid about making sure I have another question ready to fill any awkward silences, that I tend to miss the natural or clever follow-up questions. And I'm terrible at pounding the pavement for a scoop, you know? But I loved putting together the words. So I started freelancing for Television Without Pity (back then it was still called Mighty Big TV), and through that, a producer starting up his own reality show contacted me and said he wanted fresh creative brains to be in the story department. I was increasingly unhappy at the paper and feeling potentially stuck, so this was a wonderful escape. I moved out to LA, got into reality-TV story producing, which isn't that much unlike recapping or fugging, in spirit: You're taking found material, and trying to turn it into something fun. Both TV and recapping offered lots of chances for creativity, and with recapping in particular I loved the riffing, and the ways you could take a fun new approach to things. I learned a lot about writing and the kind of writer I wanted to be just from my colleagues at that site. So when we started Go Fug Yourself, it was everything we loved -- teasing, sarcasm, opinion, but not as long-form (and thus time-consuming, although it still does take time) as writing a recap of a TV show.
JESSICA: I have an English degree and did all kinds of stuff that involved writing before GFY became my day job -- I did copywriting, mostly, and marketing writing, and then I, like Heather, worked in reality TV for several years. I can tell you that we certainly never expected the blog to be successful, AT ALL. We truly just thought it was going to be a little jokey thing we'd do for fun, for our friends, and no one would ever ever read it. So the success has been a total surprise. And it's been an incredibly fun ride.
2. Do you both have a life mantra or philosophy you live your life by? Something that you always go back to when making decisions about what to do in life?
HEATHER: I don't have a nice, polished little phrase, or anything. But I've gotten myself here by not trying to create a map for myself. I never get too hung up on The Plan, because stuff comes up you won't expect, and you want to be able to consider it openly. (Pursuant to that, I never jump to decisions.) When I was 21, I thought I was going to be a journalist forever. Then I realized I didn't want to follow that path, because where would it put me? Either as a section editor, which I'd done and not loved in college, or as an investigative reporter, which wasn't for me, or possibly as a columnist, which I wasn't sure about since I wasn't totally sold on what area of journalism I wanted to be in (except maybe sports, but it was a bit late for that switch). When I got into reality TV, the career chain from running the story department was to do more stuff with the actual shooting and production, then supervising and executive producer jobs, and I realized I didn't want to do that, either. But if I'd felt like I couldn't stray from The Plan, or either of those career ladders, I'd have ended up stranded. By being flexible, and open to new avenues, I really was able to stumble into a job that has completely changed my life and made me incredibly happy to live it.
JESSICA: I basically try to do make the decision that I feel I will least regret when I'm 100. I don't always stick to that -- and of course, life is too unpredictable to know what you will or will not regret (like, you might think you won't regret going to Tahiti until the boat sinks and you're a castaway) -- but I do try to think about it. But I also share Heather's basic philosophy of trying not to get too hung up on The Plan. Which is hard, because I am a control freak.
3. Lastly, what advice would you give to others who want to start either a blog, company, new career and so on? What words would you say to them if they have the fear factor of failing?
HEATHER: Don't be afraid. If you're starting something because your primary motive is, "I want to make a ton of money and then buy Maui," well, it MIGHT work, but that's not so much passion for your work as it is passion for the potential spoils of your work. You need to care. And it needs to show that you care. That helps a lot with the fearlessness -- if you love this leap you're taking, and you're so excited to take it, then it frees you up to jump ahead and not look back and let things come as they may. But it also probably helps to have a bottle of tequila under your desk.
JESSICA: Get ready to work hard. So make sure that whatever you're doing is something you don't mind doing -- or at least thinking about -- 24/7. Or at least 20/6. Because having your own company is incredibly satisfying but also unrelenting in the amount that it demands from you. It's worth it, and it's fun, but it's not easy, so make sure you're ready to go all in.
Thank you Heather and Jessica for your great advice and your constant inspiration!
