Everything I did at work last week skittered off the runway on to the grass or overshot the line or struck out. It did not feel good. I spent a good 48 hours questioning my abilities and another 48 hours wondering if I should get a job at the hardware store. This is an overly romanticized solution, of course. My best friend works retail and he told me that part of his job is telling people to leave the store when they are suspected of shoplifting. I’m quite sure he’s not paid enough for the abuse he receives from the people he has to turf.
No one’s calling me slurs or throwing things at me, but that’s a low bar. The team I work with is aces and one bad week should not sour me on the entire job, but I took it all personally when I made that third strike. Imagine me shuffling back to the bullpen, dragging the baseball bat in the dust behind me, head down, shoulders slumped… I was disappointed to let everyone down after showing so much promise in recruiting season.
I am a contract copywriter for a creative agency. For you Mad Men fans, I’m Peggy Olson at Sterling Cooper, without the smoking and the midcentury modern sexism. I work on projects for big tech clients. At its foundation, my job is putting together words in such a way that people spend money on tech. In order to not lose my mind, I pretend that my job is to put words together in such a way that people understand what the tech does; they can decide if spending money on it makes sense.
This round of failures has me thinking about what makes me good at my job when I’m good at it — which is most days, honestly. I like time for things to marinate. I solve problems while I’m walking Harley the Dog or swimming laps. I like clear feedback. “This sucks” is not clear feedback. “This needs to include this issue you overlooked and here is a suggested fix,” is clear feedback. And as solitary and introverted as I am, I like to work a problem with smart people. I appreciate different perspectives and it helps to think out loud with a giant brained person.
I also like to get my hands on the tech if at all possible. How and why people use it needs to be clear when I sit down to write. I’m not great with poorly defined products or tech that presents itself as an idea rather than a tool. Realism can be an obstacle in my work; I am not a woman who suspends disbelief easily. I can write about imaginary or not fully baked things but my best work will be after the cake is on the plate in front of me. I’m committed to simple language — jargon makes me feel like screaming — and it’s hard to use clear language when the object you’re writing about is insubstantial or blurry around the edges.
When I found that the work had missed the mark, I sorted through which parts were on me, which were not, and which were circumstantial. This isn’t because I was looking to blame anyone; it’s because I was looking for what I could fix and what I couldn’t. Years back when I did work retail, I volunteered to take the blame for things all the damn time because I wanted us to just fucking fix things, not focus on whose fault it was that something had gone awry.
That remains my general philosophy, to say, “Cool, cool, it’s my fault, I fucked up. What now?” People are distracted, traffic was bad, they had a fight with their loved one, they’re living through something terrible that’s invisible to us, whatever, whatever. The future of civilization is not resting on a typo that is easily fixed or a messaging statement that’s not quite there. I am not a paramedic or a heart surgeon or a firefighter, I am not delivering aid to a war zone. I’m writing copy about tech products. It’s trivial in the grand theater of humanity.
Once a week I have a volunteer shift with a refugee and immigrant services program that helps undocumented minors though the asylum process. Something in that path gets screwed up, a 17 year old kid who’s done zero crimes can be deported to a country where their family is shattered and there is no safe place to sleep. I feel like I don’t do much. I teach them how to set up and manage their application accounts. I teach them about two factor authentication and security questions and the administrative bullshit we all deal with in, I dunno, our Netflix accounts. Only in their cases, what they do determines if they get to stay in this country. They miss a email about a hearing date, they’re fucked. Truly. This role is right for me because I’m good at helping people understand that tech can help them get shit done.
This is a very long way of saying that I am trying to find perspective around my day job, my failures, and what ultimately matters. Copy is how I keep the lights on, but it’s wild to get spun up about copy after you work with a refugee facing a deportation hearing. I wonder if this is why The Man wants all our time, why part time tech jobs are so rare on the ground. If you don’t give The Man all your time, you learn that other things are more important, even when there’s no money involved.
Film note: Elvis of the Yukon is in online in the Seattle Film Festival. Go here, get tickets, watch, give us all the stars, and share if you like what you see. It matters, there’s a People’s Choice component of this festival. Thank you.