writing

It’s my last day in an office, as an office-monkey. Hopefully, it will be my last day in any office, ever.

I feel extremely manic - like whenever anyone says anything to me, I want to scream, “Screw you!” and then give them the utterly immature double-birdie. This is totally regardless of who they are or what they say to me. It’s kind of a nice feeling, although I hope I can make it through the day without actually doing it.

In a final and desperate fuck you from Pavlov’s administrative assistant, I have been asked to pack every single history book, premium, and sales tool in the office and ship them to Boston (where my position is moving after I leave), all on my last day. This is a lot of stuff and the task is almost laughably impossible. However, in my heightened, almost-superhero state of bliss, I am tackling the project with speed, superhuman strength, and a big, sloppy smile on my face.

It’s kind of like when some petite woman’s toddler gets pinned under a car (how do toddlers always seem to manage this??) and she somehow summons her five-foot-two, 100-pound body to lift the car off the ground and save her child. You know what that’s called? It’s call love making even the most impossible things possible. Of course, in my case, I’m accomplishing the impossible due to my deep, black, seething, paranoid, hate. But it still feels good.

And when I get off this afternoon, I’m going to eat a big hamburger with Ben and then meet all my friends for drinks at a tacky bar. And tomorrow, for the first time, I’m the only one who gets to tell me what to do.

(These are some adorable and hilarious candy hearts  my friend Hilary made for me to help me get through my last week - what Ben is calling my “victory lap.”)

Coming in at #6 in our Top Ten Countdown of things I won’t miss about my office job is… not having any control.

And mostly, I’m talking about my paycheck. There it is, every two weeks: the same amount of money, down to the cent. While people with families or other responsibilities might find this comforting, I find it really unmotivating and stifling.

Because the thing is, I could do a really, really crappy job this week - come in late, leave early, long lunches, shoddy spreadsheets, etc. Or I could do a really, really awesome job - stay after hours, skip lunch, be meticulous, not make personal phone calls, etc. And either way (or somewhere in the middle, where I usually end up), I get paid the exact same amount. Down. To. The. Cent.

There’s simply no reward for doing a good job. You could get a promotion (unlikely for my position) or you could get a raise (we saw how that went) or you could get some praise from your boss (praise pays exactly 0% of your rent). A smart person in my position would do the least amount necessary to keep their job. But that’s no way to live.

By freelancing, I get to make my own decisions about how much I make. If I want to work a grueling 12-hour day and make $500, I would be free to do that. Or, if I wanted to take a day off, I could, keeping in mind that I wouldn’t make a dollar. Even though I’m giving up the luxury of knowing exactly how much I’ll make in a day or a month, I’m also getting the luxury of being in control of how much I make.

The bottom line is that my actions will be reflected in the results. And that’s pretty important to my mental health and general outlook on life.

Yeah, I read self-help books from time to time. Sometimes a girl needs help. Sure, I might order it anonymously online and rip the unmarked package open in a dark room in my home, but I read them.

More specifically, I’ve read quite a few self-help books about freelancing recently. But this last one, The Well-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman, really gave me the confidence to stop freelancing on the side and take the plunge into a full-time operation. It was recommended to me by Beth Z, who quit her job last year to start freelancing and who now writes a blog about her ongoing experiences with the Big Change.

While many other freelance books play on the fantasy of sitting at home and writing for The New Yorker from time to time and fending off rabid fans with a stick, The Well-Fed Writer focuses on something a little different and a lot more realistic: getting writers well-paying work that will allow them their preferred hermit-like lifestyle and, over time, give them the freedom to work on their other goals and dreams.

This book isn’t about how to write or how to write for corporations - it doesn’t cover how to write a brochure or a press release or an internal newsletter. But it does cover the business side of things (which most writers are naturally dumb at) like marketing yourself, setting rates, finding clients, keeping clients, and navigating your time and expenses.

The book probably wouldn’t be helpful for someone who doesn’t already have a small foundation of published clips and who doesn’t have confidence in their writing abilities. It certainly isn’t for someone who doesn’t want to throw themselves into the full-time freelancing lifestyle. But it is helpful if you’re pretty sure you have the skills and personality for the work but don’t know where to start.

The book also has a very helpful set of appendices that show examples of many of the topics covered, from sample mailers to sample thank-you notes. Everything, from the beginning to end, isn’t very glamorous, but that’s not what the serious freelance writer needs to hear. He simply covers the often-boring nuts and bolts of running a solo business.

Although the book is a treasure trove of information, of which I highlighted roughly half of what I read, it is a little dated. It was originally published in 2000, and even in the last eight years, a lot has changed, especially in regards to marketing techniques and technology stuff. For example, Bowerman doesn’t discuss online opportunities for writing, setting up your own website, or web content writing jobs. (I heard he does cover more of this stuff in his newer book, which I have also secretly ordered online).

The book does have a tiny bit of a smarmy infomercial sales tone from time to time and it does make things sound a lot easier than they actually are (for example, the subtitle is “Financial Self-Sufficiency as a Freelance Writer in Six Months or Less”) but in the end, it’s full of information that would have taken me years to perfect on my own. And, more importantly, it gave me confidence that, with enough hard work (and a lot of cold calls) I could trust myself to get this done.

Buy The Well-Fed Writer from Amazon

In the Top Ten Things I Won’t Miss at My Job, I present #7: Authority.

I’ve always had problems with authority - I’m one of those people that, if I were ever thrown into women’s prison for a month or two for some minor offense, would keep getting myself into trouble to the point where I was in solitary confinement with a life sentence without parole. I wouldn’t necessary shiv people because I wanted to, but because someone with a uniform on told me not to.

Now, I understand that this is my problem and than respecting people who are older and wiser and smarter than me is generally a good and wise thing. However, I can’t help but notice that the structures of authority in places like offices are often… not accurate.

Or, to be more exact, I hate when people wield their authority in the wrong ways or use it too often as an excuse to treat people badly. My good boss (one of the few things I’ll miss about my job) treats everyone in the office the same, from the mail guy to the president. She asks peoples opinions, thinks about how projects or assignments affect each person, and thanks people when they do things for her, even if doing those things are part of their job. In short, she earns people’s respect. I’m more than happy to do a good job for her and go out of my way for her.

On the other hand, other people in the office seem to think that their title or corner office entitles them to treat me like I’m some other species - because I’m assistant I have to be dumber than him, to have fewer aspirations, to not deserve the things that they have. There seems to be these ideas that assistants have to be babysat, that they can’t be trusted with anything, that their math has to be checked, that their opinions don’t mean anything. They never seem to stop and think that maybe I’m simply in different circumstance they are.

These things drive me crazy on a daily basis - taking comfort in the fact that over the last year I’ve secretly been building up my own business has been the only way to suppress my outbursts. It’s such a small difference: between being told to do something and being asked. Between being part of a hierarchy and being part of a team.

In freelancing, even though you’re still working for someone, there’s an immediate built-in respect on both sides: I am providing them with a service that they can’t do themselves, and they are providing me with work. Going into the first meeting with a client means an equal exchange of information: they tell me about their company, and I tell them about the best ways to express their ideas and products with words. And the best part is, if they don’t like my stuff they won’t ask me to do another project and if I don’t like working with them, I won’t accept another project.

In the end, though, I can’t tell you how awesome it was to have this conversation with my least favorite authority figure yesterday:

“So I heard you’re leaving us. What company are you going to?”

“I’ve actually started my own business.”

“You’re what?”

“It’s going to be way more awesome than this company.”

Before we get down to business, I’d like to share a reader art submission from Jess, a very talented graphic designer from Boston. I don’t think Ripley has ever looked so good. And you thought nothing could be cute and creepy at the same time!Moving on:

Coming in at the #9 spot in the Things I Won’t Miss About My Participation in the Rat Race is having two bosses.

Why is having two bosses so terrible? Think about it this way: in many ways it’s like being a child involved in a joint custody situation - there are major communication problems, each parent wants you to love them a little more than the other parent, and whenever you do anything with one parent, you feel guilty about how the other parent might feel. Then again, it’s not like being a child involved in a joint custody situation in that while I have two bosses, I do not get to have two bikes.

Here’s how things used to work, back when I had one boss:

1. My boss would call me and ask me to complete a project for her.
2. I would complete said project.

Now, here’s how things work with two bosses:

1. My first boss calls me and asks me to complete a project for her.
2. I complete said project.
3. My second boss calls me and asks me to complete the very same project.
4. I inform her that the project is complete and sitting in her Inbox.
5. She looks it over, feels a little bit sad that she wasn’t aware that the project was even assigned, and then makes herself feel better by calling my first boss and letting her know that she would have liked to see the project done slightly differently.
6. My first boss calls me and asks me to redo the project, keeping in mind the slight changes that makes my second boss feel like she’s part of the team.
7. I re-complete said project, except that this time I am filled with bitterness and hate.
8. My second boss emails me: THANK YOU!!!! :) :) YOUR THE BEST!!!!
9. I try to ignore her grammar and to not think about my wasted life.

Here’s the thing: isn’t the point of managers that there is one person leading a project and making decisions? Does anyone in the company realize that doubling the number of managers and halving the number of assistants is STUPID? I guess it doesn’t matter to me anymore since…

Here’s what it’s like to work for a kitty boss:

1. My boss demands to play with the fishing pole feather toy.
2. I finish a writing assignment and then go fishing for kitties with the fishing pole feather toy.
3. Neither of us are wearing pants.

My week-long paid vacation is over and I’m back at my office job for a final two-week run before my permanent freedom. My experimental week freelancing from home went better than I could have ever expected and all of my doubts about quitting my job are gone. Now all I have to do is get through the next ten work days without losing any morale (and while somehow working two jobs at once).

I was pretty depressed getting up this morning and returning to the regularly-scheduled program that is my crappy desk job - until I realized that I could no longer do any wrong at work.  That’s right: from here on out, I am free to do what I please. I mean, what are they going to do, fire me?

With this new what-are-they-going-to-do-fire-me attitude, I slipped on my dress-code violating green Saucony sneakers, ran my fingers through my bed-head hairdo, and moseyed out the door 20 minutes late. And right now, at ten in the morning, I am sitting at my desk updating my blog and eating a pudding cup. It’s quite freeing.

And if some higher-up asks me about my inappropriate footwear or quickly-deteriorating attitude, I can say whatever I want without having to worry about the consequences. I haven’t felt this way since the last few weeks of high school before graduation - that glorious time after you’ve been accepted to college and after your GPA no longer matters.

In fact, I’m sitting here smiling right now, licking the lid of my pudding cup, thinking about all of the awesome things I could say if someone confronted me - or, rather, the one awesome thing I will say if anyone confronts me. Screw you!

I mean, sure, I’m going to try and get through these final days without an outburst. Maybe instead I’ll just smile, prop my sneakers up on the desk, offer them a chocolate vanilla swirl SnackPak, and ask them about their dreams outside of these beige cubicle walls. But it sure is nice to know the Screw you! option is there.  

Also, to keep morale up until February 15, I’ll be presenting the Top Ten Things I Won’t Miss About Being A Glorified Copy Machine - one for each day I have left on the job, starting tonight.

As Super Tuesday approaches and we try to separate empty promises and strategic moves from real, actual thoughts and goals, I couldn’t have read a better book than Dreams From My Father.

Here’s why: even though I didn’t realize it when I picked it up, Obama wrote this book over ten years ago, when he was fresh out of law school and long before he was worrying about what people wanted to hear. It is, I think, a great way to “get to know” the candidate outside of the media, the hype, and the confusion that comes along with a presidential bid.

The book follows Barack through his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, his community work in Chicago, and his journey to meet his father’s family in Kenya. Along the way, he has to come to terms with the death of his absent father, being raised primarily by his white grandparents (you don’t hear about this much), and learning the ropes of being a community organizer in inner city Chicago.

The thing that amazed me most about the book was watching Obama 1) work through problems and 2) analyze both sides on an issue. These two traits came through in two different ways in the book: in personal situations (how he comes to understand and accept his troubled father and his Kenyan ancestry) and in political situations (how he comes to understand the long-standing and deep problems facing the urban poor).

It would have been very, very easy to have bad guys in this book. Evil high-up government officials who prevent community centers and jobs from reaching the impoverished in Chicago. His adulterous and alcoholic father who seemed to abandon his loved ones at every turn. But Barack thinks his way through these simple binary good/bad categories and goes far beyond them. He is constantly striving to 1) understand situations from all points of view and 2) think his way through to a solution. He has an uncanny ability to step away from the emotions of a problem and then systematically chip away at it. He understands very well that you have to know why things are as they are before you develop a plan about how to fix it.

The best example of this might be his work in Chicago. Although it’s unheard of for anyone to criticize the black ministers who organize the urban black communities in Chicago, Obama quickly began to understand the huge problems that come with church-based activism in black communities. Churches would rarely work together to solve larger problems and ministers would rarely do more than preach (which, to be fair, is their job). The action that should have followed a sermon simply wasn’t organized. Because many black leaders were ministers, many black leaders were also, essentially, just talk. What followed was three years of work in which Obama not only made major, innovative steps in Chicago but in which he also learned how to inspire both individuals and small groups into action.

I was also impressed by what Barack Obama didn’t leave out of the book. He made a lot of mistakes, he deals with a lot of anger, and he doesn’t succeed at everything. Still, you can not only see him learning from his mistakes, but immediately applying those lessons to his next challenge.

The book, as a more general read, was good as well. The writing wasn’t stellar (something Obama is quick to point out in the forward to the reprint) but it was still much better than one might expect from someone who isn’t primarily a writer. Getting to see the inner struggle of a biracial person growing up in 60s and 70s America was also really fascinating.

There are a lot of great candidates in the upcoming election, and I feel positive about more than two of them. But especially after reading this book, my doubts about Obama’s lack of experience are gone. He has something that trumps years in Washington: a stellar judgment and an almost eerie ability to put himself in someone else’s shoes and understand both sides of an issue. More than that, his ability to inspire individuals to action is something that America could truly benefit from. You can even see it in his campaign: ordinary people stepping up and acting, even if they’ve never been involved in politics before.

I know that after reading his book, I donated to a political campaign for the first time in my life. He’s nothing less than inspiring.