Confusing work for worth
After over 10 years in digital marketing, I’ve finally (mostly) called it quits. I was never particularly proud of the industry I worked in. Shit, I don’t know if I could even go so far as to say I was invested in it, beyond the very-necessary pay it provided.
Then again, I only got into the field because it allowed me to parlay being born & raised on the internet into a career when the last three jobs listed on my resume were shilling cigarette coupons, niche softcore pornography, and a brief foray in the then-recently legalized medical marijuana industry.
Early on, I reaped the benefit of having a quirky mentor that hired me not despite my previous work experience, but because of all the effort I’d put into starting TattooSnob*. In retrospect, I wish I spent more time with my mentor and less on the website – but I can rationalize this shortcoming with the acknowledgement that I was fielding both an eating and exercise disorder at the time.
From there my working hours went towards a host of digital properties, from financial advisory services to content-centric startups that didn't last more than six months and single-purpose payment platforms that, inexplicably, did. Yet regardless of who I’m working for or the projects undertaken under the guise of being “self-employed”, there’s an undercurrent of wondering why I bother, who all this marketing is serving, and if all this cognitive dissonance is useful or just perpetuating the kind of mental gymnastics that inevitably leave me feeling bad.
I may swear allegiance to pricey (but perfectly fitted) denim, but I do so while fielding the burdensome sense that marketing begets mindless consumption. The average consumer is nothing if not contented with little, yet aching for more.
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During dinner with a former business partner and an acquaintance only she would refer to as a ‘friend’, I commented that I work to live, but don’t live to work.
The ‘friend’s eyebrows went up. “Really?” he said. “But how are you going to succeed at the game if you aren’t even on the field?”
As I explained my position, the tone of the conversation changed; middling somewhere between disdain and confusion as I stated that there were times when phones should be shut off, the human at the end of the line having intentionally rendered themselves unreachable.
No one else at the table agreed that being on-call 24/7 was unhealthy, abnormal, and largely unproductive; I couldn’t understand how they thought they – and those closest to them – benefitted from the constant need for the rush emitted from fielding non-crisis “emergencies” after hours.
The type of “work/life balance” espoused by startup founders on their publishing platform of choice and a truly healthy boundary between work and the rest of your life are vastly different. The first is good for clicks, the other for cognitive load, though I’ve had no luck convincing people looking for the former of the benefits of the latter.
When I parted ways with said business partner months later, it was brightened by a little by the lesson learned: people who do not have good boundaries of their own tend to be incapable - and often unwilling - to respect those of others.
Previously I’d assumed this applied only to the obligatory “polyamorous” Burners I knew occupying collaborative co-living spaces - turns out it’s just as applicable when shoulder-to-shoulder with workaholics in an unhealthy relationship with the feedback loop created by app notifications.
Interactions like this one stir me to question my work ethic. Workaholism is a culturally desirable trait to embody, the kind we tie to success – at least when discussing the eventual outcome of all those long hours, sleepless nights, years of blood, sweat and tears, and so on. Is this a quality one must cultivate, or simply comes equipped with? Are my priorities fucked up, or do I lack the drive to perform, regardless of its cost?
It’s not that I don’t have an underlying drive to succeed so much as I don’t find working to be terribly fulfilling. Having worked alongside several idiots with post-IPO Centurion cards, I don’t effort always equals outcome. Some folks are born with it, some work for it, and an awful lot seem to just get lucky.
Maybe it’s just my outlook: I’ve never been in a situation where I loved my job beyond its ability to finance my adventures and supply consistent access to healthcare. I wouldn’t classify myself as career-driven, as I attribute any serious state of employ to a bit of luck that is apt to run out. (Spoiler alert: so far, it seems I am right.)
That said, it’s weird that I am often in a state somewhere between self-employed and entrepreneurship-based blues; I may have been a good marketer, but I’ve never been much of a salesman. Nor, if I’m being honest, do I want to be. While I may be forced to work to live, I don’t live to work; well-oiled machines do not “grind.”
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Some people find purpose in their work, and I’d like to think some of that can be attributed to the fact that not all work looks the same. There are writers that refer to their undertaking as “the work” – and I get it. But I work for money, not pleasure, and these days I am not writing for either**. As Dorothy Parker put it, “I hate writing, I love having written”—there’s much to be said for the contentment experienced upon hitting ‘Send’ or ‘Publish’. It’s the time between ideation and completion that causes me problems. You can show a rough sketch or share a handful of bars from an unfinished melody; these mediums don’t seem to suffer by sharing a work in progress. But notes and drafts are but ugly babies that have not yet matured into darlings worth murdering; not meant to be shared, lest they lessen the weight of each word as the eye takes it in. The folder of my drafts is more graveyard than incubator. Ugly babies can only be beautiful to one person, you see, and I’ve never fancied myself the maternal type.
In recent months, the names of several internet writers I used to know floated across my screen enough times for me start feeling envious. Rediscovering their work has prompted me to wish I’d lamented less and published more.
Where would I be now if I had had a little bit more face in the personal essay economy? If I had laid bare more secrets and painful experiences for $50 a pop? Would I be writing for TV? The editor of something online? Perhaps I would have formed a significant fan base that might not have financially fueled my writing habit, but at least supported it with the likes of RTs, claps, and so forth necessary to validate even the most isolated of wordsmiths.
There’s no way to know, of course, and fewer reasons to fantasize about all the good such exposure would have done. The urge to string words together will always present itself, whether I want it to or not – and it will never stop feeling like work, sans paycheck, whether I expect it to or not.
And I do see the worth in doing this work, but I don’t confuse the two. The work, whatever it may be, is not the sole - or primary - determinant of my worth. Or so I keep wanting to think.
* I haven’t been involved with the project since 2014, so if you think they post low-quality work… well, what can I say? I agree with you.
** Technically, I made something like 30 cents from buffing out the rough edges of “Tatt Girl Problems” and publishing it on Medium – so that makes me woefully underpaid for it at this point.