What's Next for Me

Sure, I'd like to know what's going to happen next in medicine, technology and the arts, but only as it applies to my health, my gadgets and my career. So I tried to find out what I've got coming over the next two years. I started with Char Margolis, Los Angeles' psychic to the stars and the author of Questions from Earth, Answers from Heaven. After a whole lot of time talking about which letters the names of my family and friends start with--which I already knew--she got me to tell her that my wife Cassandra and I don't want any kids in the next two years. "Is she pregnant?" Char asked.

"No," I assured her.

"Are you trying to get pregnant?"

"No."

"Is she trying to get pregnant?"

This wasn't going well. "Be careful. I see a pregnancy coming. I think Cassandra wants kids. Be smart about it." I got the feeling psychics usually don't deal with people with healthy marriages.

Char told me that my grandmother Mama Ann was going to fall and break something. And that my mom should get herself checked for cancer. And that my co-worker Romesh Ratnesar had "success around him," which I think just meant she followed our Iraq coverage. Char told me, three times, that despite the fact that neither Cassandra nor I ski, "I see you two on a ski trip." And Char said that if my friend Adam Sachs has any premonitions about a terrorist attack to get the hell out of New York City. I foresee Adam spending much of the next two years messing with my head.

For me, she thought that I would sell a TV show and buy a house in L.A. but that I shouldn't leave my job yet. "I think you really want to move from TIME, but I don't know if it's time just yet. You must make a decent living there, so just use them," she said. Some predictions might be ruined by publishing them.

To get my incipient TV career going, Char said, I need to network. "This is the time to start schmoozing," she told me. Then she said she had some TV deals of her own going and suggested I call her friend Brad Bessey, a producer at Entertainment Tonight who was looking for a host for a spin-off. Her networking predictions were happening very fast.

I was pretty happy with Char's predictions, which sounded like a pretty good deal for me, though not so much for Mom, Mama Ann and the greater New York City area. Still, I'm thinking either Vail or Whistler.

Wanting to get more specifics about my new career opportunities, I called Richard A. Smith, a senior recruiter for Spencer Stuart and a co-author of The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers. Smith thought having my weekly column on the back page of Entertainment Weekly replaced two months ago by Stephen King's might not be permanent. "I don't think the door is closed. As companies start staffing up again, organizations are saying, 'Who were the best people we had and let's get them back,'" he said. "You were beat out for brand recognition over real talent," he said. I was liking this guy.