Yesterday I started, and abandoned, two different blog posts. I couldn’t figure out where they were going or what I wanted to say. This happens when I try to tackle a multifaceted topic on which I see a whole lot of gray (and know very little about the actual subject). I was thinking about, and attempting to write about, the confluence of privacy, writing/journaling, art, job searching, work, and being unapologetically myself.
I’ve been working an hour here and there on a recurring freelance writing and editing project in which I’m cleaning up blog posts and customer testimonials for an online privacy company. Basically, they promise that their product can help remove a person’s digital footprint and restore their privacy. As someone who has been blogging for almost a year, has occasional and modest artistic aspirations, and is in the middle of a job search, I think about my privacy and digital footprint from time to time. I’ve always been nagged by the question of audience (both intended and accidental). More and more I find myself leaning in to the Popeye quote “I yam what I yam, and that’s all what I yam.” A brilliantly cartoonish statement of being.
Now, more than ever, companies are concerned about the public profiles of their employees. With the rise of social media, companies have had to add or modify their conduct clauses. The lines between who you are in the office and who you are outside of the office have become increasingly blurred. We live in an age of information and disinformation. We live in an age of constant surveillance and easy outrage. We have ceded the middle ground of understanding for righteous extremes. We prefer the soundbite (sometimes out of context) as opposed to the full picture. I often lament the loss of nuance, understanding, and compassion. We’ve all seen the videos of people behaving poorly in public spaces. A woman yells at and is abusive towards an employee who asks her to wear a mask and the internet swarms to identify, vilify, and ruin. I can’t possibly defend her behaviors, but something feels amiss in the swift blood lust that follows such incidents. I honestly don’t know what should be done in those situations. Should she be fired? Should she be shamed? It feels like the entire nation is full of rage and hatred. We’ve become a nation of prosecutors (more accurately, judge, jury, and executioners) whose thirst for moral outrage can’t be quelled.
The shame of it all is that this outrage, when turned against our common neighbors, can be devastating, yet when applied to people of power, has limited effect (which only fuels more outrage). The truth is, those of lesser financial means (and power) have to be more cautious about their public comments than their more well-off and powerful countrymen – their very livelihood may depend on it. Donald Trump can boast that he could shoot a person in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any support. He can be recorded saying grab her by the p*ssy and still be elected president. While the delivery driver who gets a DUI, or the teacher who makes an inappropriate Facebook comment, or the college kid who posts a drunken selfie will almost certainly lose his or her job or not get the next job. The message to those poor saps is that you need to be more mindful of how you behave. This isn’t a political statement, it’s a fairness statement.
I get easily lost in these thoughts. It’s why I couldn’t finish the posts from yesterday. It’s why I’m struggling to be linear and succinct today. I rail against what I call work culture and how it has come to dominate our personal lives because so few of us have a choice on whether we play the game or not, and even fewer have a say in what the rules of the game are. It doesn’t seem fair.
I try to think about these topics from numerous angles. I write. I might one day want to publish poems or a book. I don’t think I write about many controversial things or say anything that is inappropriate or hurtful, yet, by writing, I make myself a public figure open to scrutiny and criticism. I have been an employee and a manager. I have, for the most part, believed that as an employee I am a representative of my organization (at all times). I don’t know if I feel that it’s fair or appropriate to always be that representative – especially if it means denying who you are. As a manager, and I’m glad I haven’t been asked this question, I’m not sure how I would react if one of my employees was video taped behaving poorly in public. While I was appalled by the woman who called the cops on the bird watcher in Central Park, I’m not sure she should have lost her livelihood over the incident. Her employer faced public pressure to terminate her. Again, I don’t know what the answer is. I do think our outrage is a bit misguided. We have companies that blatantly violate the law and behave poorly (they pollute, they pay unfair wages, they lie and cheat) and yet they remain in operation and when caught, their executives are sometimes paid to leave quietly as the company tries to rebrand. Rank and file employees are seldom offered those protections and they seldom have the resources to weather the consequences of their poor choices.
And maybe that’s the post I’ve been trying to write here. One that is troubled by the unfairness of economic inequality. It’s not just that wealth allows people to do and experience more of life, but that it also allows for greater freedom to make mistakes or be vocal or be free. And to be clear, I have no desire to be an asshole in public – I do value the right to do so. I try to live honestly and sincerely and treat people with kindness. What I don’t like is that there seems to be two sets of rules in this country. An eviction for a poor person or a criminal offense for a poor person is a permanent spot on their record, one from which they may never recover. An executive of a major corporation who lies and cheats and in some cases commits criminal acts can get hired again, can get loans and credit and housing, and can still retire at the seaside town of their choice (read the NPR story about how the oil industry has willingly deceived the public about plastic recycling and how some of those executives now walk the shores of their beach houses lamenting that they may have destroyed our environment). For most of us caught in the middle…. we’re just trying to keep our noses clean, stay employed, and maybe do some good. But we are always aware that we live on the knife edge between prosperity and destitution and that one misstep can make all the difference.
9/12/20 (take one): The morning is gray and humid with lighter patches of clouds to the west. I began my day with breakfast in front of the laptop re-reading my post from yesterday (after feeding the cat of course). I often feel a little guilty after writing a blog post that is about my personal hang-ups and about the people in my life. As I read and edited, I was reminded of when my ex-fiancee asked me why make it public, why not just just keep a private journal. I struggle with this question from time to time. I believe in the sanctity of privacy. I dislike our ever-increasing tendency to make everything public, to draw attention to the self, to seek out likes and shares as a form of validation. The student speaker at my daughter’s high school graduation spoke to the class in praise of the selfie. My daughter is part of the selfie generation, a cohort who came of age in the Facebook era. To them, everything is for public consumption. As such, everything is also temporary, in the moment, and in need of a little extra sheen or a photo filter. Every moment is a chance to get noticed – a “felt cute, might delete later” moment. It’s hard to know what influence this type of thinking and behavior has had on me and my generation – sometimes, we’re worse than they are when it comes to exhibitionism. When it comes to the public vs. private distinction and what’s suitable for sharing, there has been a gradual wearing away of norms. We have a president who always says the quiet part out loud – a phrase that probably wouldn’t exist if we didn’t have access to communication tools that allowed for rapid and prolific sharing… and forgetting.
Generally speaking, I have embraced the selfie culture with apprehension – the way one might hold a friend’s fussy baby who just crapped his or her diaper – arms outstretched and head slightly turned away. I write, primarily, for me. I make it public, I think, because with laying bare the soul comes a level of confidence, vulnerability, and authenticity (and freedom) that I might not otherwise feel. I sometimes worry about how my blog would be viewed by a potential partner or employer. In my stubbornness, that’s all the more reason to make it public – an unwavering commitment to myself. This is a snapshot of who I am and how I think. I negotiate from a place of transparency. I prefer to put my worst foot forward so that everyone knows what they’re getting. I also recognize that the rest of the world may not be wired this way. The rest of the world is about making the sale. Of course, I’m speaking in generalizations. There are large swaths of people who feel like I do. Not only do they talk the talk of authenticity, but they walk the walk and try to live authentic lives.
9/12/20 (take two)
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe our own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,–and our first thought, is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
Ralph Waldo Emerson – “Self-Reliance”
I was looking for a quote by Emerson about the nature of work and how what we do is often how we define ourselves. I can never find the passage. I’ve skimmed his essays dozens of times. I went looking for it this morning because I was thinking about (among other things) the nature of work. More specifically, I was thinking about how we cultivate different selves… public selves, private selves, work selves, relationship selves, friendship selves, family selves. I began this blog almost a year ago. In my about me statement, I echo Walt Whitman and his famous multitudes.
I was hoping this post would gel better than it did. I’ve returned to it several times and gotten lost each time. I’m going to hit publish and then revisit in the morning. It might just be one of those posts that doesn’t go where I want it to, and can’t be forced….