Interview with Martin D. Hirsch
A retired journalist and author: Imagination, Insight, Inspiration.
Dear Friends of Medium, one of my objectives as a writer, editor, publisher, and curator is to find and introduce influential writers and leaders in their fields to my audience via interviews starting in 2019.
When I became a Friend of Medium last year, I contacted and asked the early adopters of the program what they expected from this new subscription model. These avid readers expect curated content and visibility to the work of influential writers who can inform and entertain them with their knowledge and life experiences.
Therefore, I introduce influential writers who contribute to my curated publications and create visibility for their impactful, insightful, relatable, memorable, and eloquent stories on this platform.
In this post, I will share an interview I had the pleasure of conducting with Martin D. Hirsch, a long-term contributor to the Medium community. His stories in my publications stand out due to their impact, rich information, authentic life lessons, engaging content, impressive style, and practical insights.
Hi Martin, tell us a bit about your background.
Thank you for this opportunity to introduce myself. I got my undergraduate degree in English/Communications and my master’s degree in Journalism from Temple University in Philadelphia.
Writing was the strength that got me through my entire education. I was good at it, and I liked doing it. For a while after graduating from college, I worked as a newspaper reporter by day and a singer-songwriter by night, but burning the candle at both ends wore me out.
I decided I had to make a choice, and I chose writing, deciding to study journalism. After working for about three years in a publishing job in New York City, I applied for an entry-level public relations job through the want ads in The New York Times and was hired at Roche, the pharmaceutical company.
I worked there for 35 years, the first 20 at the company’s U.S. headquarters in northern New Jersey and the last 15 at global headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. It was a great ride! And I wouldn’t trade my expat experience for anything in the world.
How did your interest in writing factor into your career in corporate communications, and what advice do you have for writing lovers considering careers in this field?
There’s no question in my mind that what I learned getting my master’s degree in journalism became the underpinning for everything I’ve done professionally ever since.
Learning the basics of crafting a story, the inverted pyramid style of putting the most important information first, at the top of the pyramid, and broadening the facts and details from there, the objective of educating readers and influencing their thinking. Not to mention meeting my lifelong mentor in graduate school.
When I landed my first job in corporate communications and a tragic chemical explosion on the plant site occurred in my first week, my boss asked me to craft a statement explaining what had happened and exactly what we were going to do to ensure employee and public safety and make sure nothing like that ever happened again — my graduate school education immediately kicked in. And I loved this kind of assignment. My career just advanced from there and took me and my wife to live in another country and see the world.
I’d advise aspiring writers today to ask themselves exactly what they want, what they want most, and what they’re willing to sacrifice. I wanted to use my writing skills to make a living. I did NOT want to be a struggling writer, or a struggling anything, for that matter.
For many years, I felt a bit guilty for selling out with my corporate job. But as things turned out, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. With the pension and other benefits, my wife and I enjoy today, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Things have changed an awful lot since my day, but even now, you can’t argue with the advantages of working for a great company.
So now you’re retired. How old are you, and how are you dealing with aging?
I retired at the end of 2016 at 65, which was then the mandatory retirement age for men in Switzerland. Then, my wife and I returned to New York, where I’ve since mentored graduate school students, doing some communications consulting and writing.
Now I’m 72. Family members from my parents’ generation have lasted between their mid-90s and early 100s, so I figure I’ll be around for a while. My health is great, I exercise regularly, follow a Mediterranean diet and an intermittent fasting schedule.
I’m concerned about suffering from arthritis and physical pain when I get older and scared to death about losing my mental capacity — dementia, Alzheimer’s, and all that, which affected my mom and one of her sisters.
But I figure all that’s at least a decade or more away, and I try to push it to the back of my mind. They say Father Time is undefeated, but I’m gonna try to keep it competitive for as long as I can.
You mention that you and your wife were able to see a lot of the world during your long-term expat assignment in Switzerland. What were a few highlights from your travels?
What was interesting is that we went to a number of places that were really famous that you’d see all the time in National Geographic or in popular culture, and we wondered how we’d feel when we experienced these places ourselves.
Some places were nothing more or less than the pictures in our minds and were like just crossing someplace off the list: The Great Wall of China was like that. Other places fully lived up to the beauty, grandeur, and mystery of our perceptions of them, like, for example, Venice, Florence, and Rome. And then some places just blew us away and were more special and exciting than we could have imagined.
Chief among that category was South Africa: the sea of white clouds billowing over Table Mountain in Cape Town, the thrill of seeing a lion, a rhino, or a hippo up close on a safari — so close to our vehicle we almost could have touched them.
And then there was Thailand, where I had heard the people were nice, but they were more than that; the food was great, the history and culture were amazing, and the beach resorts were some of the most beautiful and relaxing we’d ever experienced. For a bit more detail on our travels, see this Medium story I wrote about reminiscing about our trips during the Covid lockdown.
What are your hobbies?
My №1 hobby is tennis. My wife and I have taken a lesson a week forever, and it’s the one thing in my life that I can practice just one time a week and still see measurable progress. I also like tinkering with my three antique clocks. And, when I have time, I still try to pick up my guitars and play with my electric piano, and I hope my muse sends me some new tunes. And of course reading…
I know you love reading, as mentioned in your stories. What are the top three books that affected your life?
That’s a tough one. In my experience, reading books affects my life in two ways: Most often, it provides the pure pleasure of reading, derived from the beauty of the words, the quality of the writing, the impact, and enrichment of the factual information imparted, or the imagination of the stories told.
More rarely, over the years, I’ve encountered a book here that has influenced my thinking about life and how to live it to the fullest. Books in the first category include:
Last Night in Twisted River, by John Irving, is About a father and son who are forced to flee a logging community in New Hampshire in 1954 after being involved in a tragic accident; they remain on the lam from a vengeful sheriff for the next five decades, during which time the boy becomes a man and a writer.
Razor Blade Tears, by S.A. Cosby, is about a tough African-American ex-con named Ike Randolph, whose gay son and his white lover are victims of a mysterious, brutal murder that Ike and his son’s partner’s father join forces to solve, overcoming their many differences and prejudices along the way.
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, by Laura Warrell, is a beautiful debut novel about a jazz trumpeter named Circus Palmer — handsome, talented, charismatic, able to pick up the prettiest woman at any bar, and the kind of guy I’ve always wanted to be but could only envy. Circus wants nothing more than to score a contract with a major jazz label, but he finds his true gratification in a much simpler place.
Regarding the second category of books, I’ve read a ton about Buddhism, meditation, right thinking, and happiness. Three books stand out from the many: Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki; That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist, by Sylvia Boorstein; and Trying Not to Try: Ancient China, Modern Science, and the Power of Spontaneity, by Edward Slingerland.
I tried to capture everything I knew about these subjects in this story on Medium, which was very well received.
Meditation is a very popular subject, which you also wrote about. What have you learned from your meditation experience, and how has it affected your life?
As I wrote in my story, I first tried meditating when I was a freshman in college, all the way back in 1969. My introduction was Transcendental Meditation, or TM, a mantra-repetition technique that, for some reason, didn’t stick with me.
Many years later, I tried Tibetan Buddhist breath-based meditation, and that’s the one I stayed with. Part of what it’s given me has been a form of relaxation, although sometimes, when I have a lot on my mind and a lot to do, meditating makes me restless and antsy.
Normally, though, it calms me and causes me to remember how little I need to sustain my life, how easily caught up and wound up I can get in small stuff that I won’t even remember in a month, and how beautiful it can be to live in the moment and allow life to follow its own path in its own time.
As one of my soul singer heroes, the late Curtis Mayfield, said, “It may not happen when you want it to, but it’s right on time.”
Why do you write on Medium?
Toward the end of my career in corporate communications, the guy who headed digital communications for my company took me on as a sort of pro bono case, trying to teach me the ropes in social media.
He dragged me kicking and screaming into the world of Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin and strongly encouraged me to start showcasing my writing on these platforms.
After I retired in 2017 and knew I wanted to get serious about writing and publishing my work, a young friend from my former company in Switzerland turned me on to Medium, which I’ve found to be a great vehicle — a good fit for me.
What are your values as an online writer?
I still keep my hand in corporate communications consulting, and for that work, my tagline is “Precise. Principled. Persuasive.”
I think those words capture my values and what I strive to achieve in the services I provide to clients.
As far as my creative writing is concerned, my catchwords are “Imagination. Insight. Inspiration.”
And those are the values that guide me and what I hope my stories deliver to readers.
How do you connect with your readers?
Nothing earth-shattering — I just try to respond promptly to any comment I receive and to express my appreciation for people reading my stories.
Why did you join ILLUMINATION, and how did you find it so far?
You know, I don’t quite remember. I had been writing on Medium for a while, and at a certain point, I found it and began submitting my stories to Illumination and then to Illumination-Curated.
At some point, you began corresponding with me in a friendly way, offering help when I got stuck with the process, and we started a really constructive relationship that keeps evolving in a great way.
I value your suggestions and the fact that we are sharing our work with one another. Thank you for amplifying my content and reaching out to a relevant audience effortlessly.
Who are some writers you follow on Medium?
There are a handful of people whose work I really appreciate. I will mention a few who impressed me.
The first is Christopher P Jones. His writing on art and artists always grabs me. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel and take in some of the world’s greatest museums and artists. My knowledge of art and art history, though, is fairly superficial. I just know what I like and what moves me. Christopher’s stories help me deepen my appreciation and understanding of some of the great works that I’ve seen and many that I haven’t. He tells you how to look at a picture and discover its meaning.
Second, I like Loren Kantor. He’s an LA-based writer and woodcut artist who’s worked in the film and music industry. I don’t know how old he is, but he writes about characters and subjects that pique my boomer interests. He writes about things like the old-school record stores I used to love to browse through from my youth all the way through my mid-adulthood. And Cary Grant’s obsession with LSD.
In addition, I like David Gerken and Thomas Oppong. And I recently read a piece I loved by Will Leitch about seeing U2 at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
What top stories do you want to share with your audience and why?
Let me give you three:
The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met
This story means a lot to me. When I was growing up, my dad had a best friend named Sammy — an amazing guy he always said he wanted to write a story about in the Most Unforgettable Character section of Readers’ Digest. My father took his own life when he was 54, and I was 20. He never got to write the story about Sammy. So I did.
When Life Rips the Rug Out from Under Us
My wife and I were the only two children from different sides of the world. Then, one day, she found out she was not who she thought she was.
Partners in Time: How I Found My Path to Writing
When I found and lost my first love at 16, I couldn’t imagine the impact it would have on me and how it would give rise to my desire to write.
What are the success factors for you as a writer on Medium?
I had a coach who advised me to “Write what interests and inspires you in the best way that you can, and hopefully others will be interested and inspired too.” So that’s what I do.
What do you recommend to the new writers on ILLUMINATION?
Just get started and stick with it. It’s a great platform to try out and use to improve your writing continuously.
What are your plans as a writer?
I plan to continue growing my following on Medium, to submit to a few top-tier publications from time to time, and to finish and publish my book by the end of this year. It’s called “What Was I Thinking? Reflections on Life’s Tragedies, Turning Points and Transitions.” In short, I want to become the best writer I can be.
Thank you, Martin, for your gracious introduction. Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of reading many stories from your collection, but one that particularly resonated with me was your extensive meditation experience. As someone who has been practicing meditation for decades, thrice a day, I found your insights deeply insightful and impactful. For those interested in exploring meditation's profound value and benefits in our lives, I’ve included a link to your story here.
Thank you for reading this interview script. I hope you explore the profile of Martin D. Hirsch and read his insightful and inspiring stories full of life lessons.
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