VOICES
Susan Mercandetti
ful. After a stint in the Ford White
House as an editor of the news
summary, then as a press aide for a
U.S. senator, I landed my “it” job:
associate producer for ABC News. I
found success at the intersection of
Ambition and Luck Streets.
In my 30s, the same success metric applied from the prior decade,
but simply gained cyclonic momentum and a frenzied intensity wellknown, fueled and even expected in
TV land. As a Nightline producer, I
traveled all over the world covering
interesting stories, leaving unused
theater tickets and broken dates behind. There was always tomorrow.
Just as I was feeling very A-game,
a wise woman doused me with icecold reality: “Don’t make the same
mistake I did,” she warned. “Your
job is far more interesting than any
man could ever be,” she said with
her professionally manicured finger
wagging. “One day, you will wake
up and it will be just you and a
bunch of Christmas packages under
a tree. You will be all alone.” Ugh.
Stab. I loved my job. I worked hard
to get there, but did not feel very
successful any longer.
When I turned 39, newly married and pregnant, I forced myself
to redefine all prior definitions. No
longer did success mean moving
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HUFFINGTON 06.02.13
up to the next, big thing. Nor did it
mean wanting to be sprinkled with
the fairy dust surrounding the famous people with whom I worked. I
no longer cared about securing the
best assignments or making more
With two small children,
I ... made calls while they
played under my home office desk.”
money. While I was happy to enjoy
those things, if it didn’t come with
flexibility, it was a non-starter.
In this decade, a flexible schedule was, to me, the new metric
by which I measured success. Of
course, the fact that our family was
not dependent on my salary alone
was not lost on me. I was extremely
cognizant of my situation, knowing
so many did not have that choice.
We lived modestly, though very
nicely, because I did not want to
be forced into a full-time salary to
support a lifestyle and house.
Fortuitously, I met then-Vanity
Fair editor Tina Brown who, to her
credit and my everlasting gratitude,
didn’t care where I parked myself.
She knew that, as a former TV
producer, I was a “get shit done”
person, so I was afforded time and