Outside USA – January 2022
English | 102 pages | pdf | 63.99 MB
Welcome at Outside USA Magazine January 2022 Issue
Whenever I meet new people, and, inevitably, they ask me what I do for a living, answering that I am the editor in chief at Outside magazine elicits a near universal response: “Wow, that must be an amazing job!” And it is, but not because I’m gorging on an endless buffet of plum assignments in the field—which is what most of these folks seem to imagine. I send writers to exotic locales way more than I travel myself. And I’m OK with that. I’m grateful to have a job that constantly taps into my creative passions.
But the reality is that working as an editor at Outside Usa magazine involves a lot of time spent indoors. Put another way, I wrestle with the same work-life-balance issues that most American employees do. Our culture puts a premium on dedication and productivity. Long hours, unused vacation time, and the threat of burnout have plagued media companies
for decades. Things have gotten worse since the start of the pandemic, however. The option to work from home seemed to be a significant step forward, but as
I learned while reading “It’s Easy to Find Balance,” Gloria Liu’s essay on the magic formula every one of us is searching for, we work more hours on average as a result.
There are all the Zoom meetings, of course, but the real cause might be that our desks are now in our living rooms. There’s no longer any clear separation between work and home. Liu’s piece is the opening salvo in a special package of fitness stories we are publishing this month under the title “Burnt” (page 38).
As you may have guessed, the goal was to explore creative ways to combat the work fatigue we are all feeling. We’ve long known that time spent outside in nature is one of the best ways to boost mental health and well-being, but how do you carve out time for that in an increasingly frenzied workday?
Our search for answers involved one editor trying to take control of his calendar (moderate success), another trying to reduce her workday to the research-backed
ideal of 7.2 hours (mostly unsuccessful), and the entire editorial staff attempting to take an honest one-hour daily lunch break, away from their desks and preferably outside, for two weeks straight (abject failure). All these goals are proven strategies for restoring balance, but as we discovered, old habits are hard to break. We hope you readers find more success than we did.
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