They say that when you want to really see something, you should step away from it and come back later. I’m not sure they really meant ‘cubicle’ when they said such things. But I’m gonna say that’s exactly what they had in mind, those they.
After seven long, glorious months, I have, my friends, returned to a cubicle. For the last seven months, I have been purposely unemployed. Haven’t stepped a pinky toe in an office building. I don’t like to tell people what I do because it changes every day and then people are asking you about that book you wrote and then you hate it and then you have to backpedal and muh muh muh.
But here’s the truth: I took those seven months off because I thought I’d really really try to make it in the mean world of freelance writing. And I have. Oh yes. I now have a column on KCET. I write for the Huffington Post and Tiny Buddha. I have another inspirational blog on Stratejoy. I’ve written for Nerve and The Next Family. And I have edited at least 50 stories for Taboo Tales. Plus, I’ve had the pleasure of being rejected or ignored by countless others! AND… I did happen to finish a book in there somewhere.
After all that, I have made…. wait for it….. drumroll please…
$230.
Two-hundred-and-thirty dollars (I thought if I wrote it out like that, it would seem like more. It’s not working, is it?).
$230. In seven months.
Yep.
I’m a struggling writer!
“It sounds much cooler than it is,” I said as I stole ketchup packets from McDonald’s.
Just before I began re-using my toilet paper, I got a call to come back to an advertising agency. A cubicle. I have always had a hate/hate relationship with cubicles because they’ve represented claustrophobia, a stifling, a boss. Nobody puts baby in a cubicle. Some people like cubicles though. They do. They like the structure of a solid job. The insurance. The daily meetings that give them validation. The strange smells that cloud the office around lunch time. I applaud those people. I believe happiness is a choice, and I was never able to make that choice in a cubicle before.
Now that I’m back in a cubicle and I am seeing things anew, it’s become clear to me that the majority of people DON’T like to work in cubicles. They don’t. Yet they do it. Oh, they do it. Every day. And then, they go to the kitchen to complain about it. My new carpeted box happens to sit next to the kitchen.
“Is it Friday yet?” I hear constantly. “This project sucks.” “Can we go home yet?” “So-and-so is totally inept.”
It’s the thing to do, I guess. Complain. It bonds corporate colleagues. There’s some secret rule that says, ‘I’m gonna always be miserable and you be miserable too. And that’s what we’ll have in common. If we do it together, neither of us ever has to have the courage to change. And we’ll always talk about our misery in kitchens and bathrooms.”
My desk is also next to a very loud talker. She talks loudly because she wants everyone to know how much work she is doing.
“I JUST GOT TEN NEW EMAILS,” she says to No One.
“I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE,” she says to the kitchen.
And then when No One or Kitchen says nothing, she sighs. Really loudly.
I brought headphones.
Then I went to a meeting. I don’t yet know the politics of this particular office, but I gathered that we were all supposed to be scared of the one lady at the head of the table. Someone brought her some lunch in the middle of the meeting. She complained about it and told everyone they were doing a bad job. And then the meeting was over.
In actuality, I’m having lots of fun at this job. I’m finding it nice to be a microscopic observer. But what I’m observing is that people don’t want to be there. But they’re there anyway. I watch them stride in reluctantly from the parking lot. And I want to scream at them and say, “You don’t have to be doing this if you don’t want to!”
And I know what they’ll say. They’ll say ‘The economy is so bad. I’m lucky I have a job.’
And I’ll tell them that’s a shitty excuse. Because I really feel like it is a shitty excuse. Any excuse is shitty. I don’t care if you have five kids or you are here illegally or you have only three toes or you can’t see. People change jobs and persevere and reinvent themselves every day. I realize that I myself am writing this from a cubicle. But it’s temporary. I swear. RIGHT? I mean, right? There’s a guy I talked to who has worked here for twelve years. He has a band. He is not doing anything about his band. It hurts to see this. Soon he’s gonna retire and then die, having not tried.
If you really want to do something, DO IT. Stop waiting for it to happen. Yeah, I’m a struggling writer, but I’m a writer. I’m doing it. And it’s hard. And maybe I’m going through a period where I can’t have as much fun as I would like because I’m writing all the fucking time and pitching myself to strangers and making awkward jokes at lame media mixers. But I will turn it around. I’ll sell my book. I’ll one day have a column that pays me more than it costs to write the column (ahem, KCET).
Anyone who doesn’t think they can also fulfill what they want in life is letting fear feed them a bunch of excuses. They’re letting their low self-confidence tell them that this is as good as it gets. But it’s not true. It’s never as good as it gets until you decide it is.
So get the fuck up. March out of your cubicle. Do the best you can with your day. And stop congregating in the kitchen to complain. You’re better than that.
And, you, yeah you: Stop taking the elevator from the third floor to the second fucking floor.
And this concludes the meanest inspirational speech ever. Steve Jobs was better at this. Too bad he died.
