I added a blog to my newly minted âprofessionalâ SquareSpace. I set out to fill it with thoughtful, âprofessionalâ posts that would showcase my renewed interest and refined writing acumen. Of course, I wrote about five posts, one of which was recycled from Thought Catalog by way of Medium. Two pieces stayed in drafts. They didnât make the cut because of their rambling, quasi-psychotic or otherwise unfitness for âprofessionalâ writing showcasement.Â
Yesterday, I copied the writing I found worth saving and removed the blog from my âprofessional portfolio.â Later in the evening I deactivated Twitter, started a new Twitter account for the newsfeed aspect and probably wouldâve carried the social media pseudo-purge further were it not for the sneaking suspicion that one job Iâd been doing pro-bono utilizes Facebook and is supposed to pay in a slightly altered form in the near future.
Then I considered starting a new, entirely disconnected blog. The aim was to distance my âprofessionalâ self from my personal platform. This smacked of personal brandsmanship so I abandoned the idea and turned to this existing territory.
As Iâd written in one scrapped blog post on SquareSpace, I donât have much time for âcontentâ or âmarketing.â Unfortunately, those words are emblazoned over the most obvious threshold between the world of unsatisfying low-rent freelance work and even more unsatisfying rent-overwhelming in-office corporate work.Â
But, as I was slow to remember yesterday, thatâs a binary. And nothing appeals to me less than binaries! Besides condescension -- all forms -- but whatever, who cares, thatâs only tangentially related to the matter at hand.
The matter at hand is reclaiming (read: claiming) agency over the direction of my life, working or otherwise.
At various moments of âbreakthroughâ Iâve outlined an ideal living situation involving disparate creative pursuits, almost utter autonomy, and peripatetic-friendly work, though only in an optionality-rich sense, not out of necessity...naturally.
âIâll have a column in The Stranger,â I said, âWith a weekly show on KEXP and the nearly-earned status of an about-town luminary!â That particular vision was articulated on a bright, warm summer afternoon. I was up from LA and feeling the pull of a homecoming. After finding myself swept aside by the forces of ambition at play in said urban desert, I painted Seattle as a small pond, ready to welcome back a proverbial fish; not-so-big, but not-so-small (in my mind).
Over a year later and arrogance a-shambles, Iâm trying to map out a new path paved with humility!
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If the world demands arbitrary credentials, I have to find a way to meet them, and not with a dynamic combination of eye-roll, scoff and carry on. For personally advantageous reasons, Iâve long considered writing a meritocracy. Evidence to the contrary was literally everywhere but still my notion persisted. After all, I had been told I was good at this...someone with more sway would eventually notice...and what a relief that would be!
My dream of meritocratic shortcutting is dying two deaths:
1) Writing seems to be considered communication rather than expression. This is a problem when your writing is unavoidably expressive, but not particularly concerned with the finer points of grammar, punctuation or structure, etc.Â
I took it as a compliment when a classmate remarked on the similarity between my written and speech patterns. I suppose I shouldnât have.
2) Iâm almost certainly too reliant on the âthey just donât get itâ bullshit Iâm âexpressingâ in â1).â Iâve reread my papers from academic life. It was not pretty, baby! And, while Iâve certainly improved, the fact remains: Thereâs work to be done. Candy can be any enticing medley of design and color but jagged edges will make it impossible to consume. Those jagged edges may have been somewhat smoothed by interested parties (especially lately) but theyâre still jutting! The time has probably come to give up my fantasy of never learning the rules before breaking them...realistic though I believe that âfantasyâ to be...
âBasic qualificationsâ have to be met, explained a lightly patronizing rejection email. Guys! Who knew!
To that end, I am suspending my theory of mixed-use serial commas, and committing to the style of whatever benefactors I can scrounge up in the future. I will put my head dutifully down and adhere to the style guides and keyword optimizers! Who cares! Itâs all in the game, baby!
Or I can use the refinements that come naturally with practice and stop trying to fit myself into the gaping âcontentâ void of the corporate written word. Will I be happy writing copy for data analytics? No! Will I be happy blogging for middling B2B comers? Likely not! So why on Godâs green earth am I applying for those-type-gigs??
The attempt to attain an inarguable sense of place? True.
Health benefits? Yes, that too.
I want stability. At least Iâm fairly sure I do. I want to know exactly how much Iâm making and when Iâll be paid and with that certainty the ability to put it towards what I want, near and far term...But is it worth the misery and senseless exhaustion Iâve experienced in each and every office job Iâve ever had?
I love the invented life imagined a couple summers ago. I love the idea of working in a bookstore. I donât want to have to live in a city. I want options. I want enough and I donât need much. I love the idea of committing to writing as expression, not as a communicating medium of seminar schedules or recruitment packages. I want more from the one skill Iâve even marginally isolated to build on.
And I think I can do it. And I think I will do it. And it begins by doing the work. And, contrary to the contrarian bent of this concluding âOrâ section, I can brighten the patterns of my product and smooth off the edges at once.