Today started out as a day like any other. A day of breakfast, a cup of coffee – your basic productive morning. Sean worked on answering his emails, setting up his next jobs, and preparing for his current one as New York photographer.
And then…we realized the site was down. We tried loading it a few times. Nothing. Intrigued, we wondered if it was a momentary glitch or if we were getting a massive influx of traffic. We had survived the New York Times article that came out yesterday. So why shouldn’t the site survive this current hiccup of visitors?
Suddenly, a friend sent me an email, “Hey just saw the article on the front page of Yahoo.com, congrats!” And the light bulb clicked. (Or “went on”, depending on your metaphor).
Turns out the front page of Yahoo linked to the NYTimes article, which of course, included a link to One Week Job. Hence, the crushing weight of thousands of visitors hurtling down the vast tubes of the internet, attempting to view our site. Unfortunately, rather than step up to the task, our server ran screaming into the night.
Sean and I scrambled to get at least a basic page up. (You may have noticed the sparse homepage morphing with each page reload). We threw a brief outline of the project, Sean’s email, and just in case, his phone number. Within seconds, the phone started ringing.
“Hi! Is this Sean?” “Hey, Sean?” “Hola! Is this the One Week Job guy?”
Sean fielded the calls, but quickly realized it was a lost battle. There was no way to answer every ring with 10 more flooding his call waiting. We made the executive decision and took his phone number off the site. As if in immediate response, his email begin trickling upward with each passing minute. 40. 45. 62. 89. Over 100 and they just kept coming.
What’s an overwhelmed job seeker to do?
The only thing we could – he let the emails wait and headed out to his One Week Job. The show (or in this case, photo shoot) must go on. After setting up the location, and learning the art of photography from behind the lens, Sean was called upon to stand in as a model. But you might say this photo shoot is a little…unorthodox.
As I type now from a loft in the Chinatown neighborhood of Manhattan, NY, Sean is dressed in a pair of pajamas, sitting in a bathtub, pretending to brush his teeth. With two other pajama-clad men. And a woman. I think there’s even a rubber ducky. When you see the photos, you’ll understand.
In the meantime, he asked me to thank everyone for their emails and support (which has been incredible!) and he’ll try his best to send a reply after stumbling home tonight after the shoot.
If you’re brand new to the project, welcome! Feel free to check out the previous weekly episodes, our photos, and Sean’s reflections from the road.
– Ian