I haven’t posted anything… I was going to say significant or substantial, but my cynical side asked the snarky question, “when do you ever post something ‘significant’ or ‘substantial’?” Other than the daily fifty-two project, I haven’t posted since November 19 – before Thanksgiving. I’ve started a half-dozen things: observations on living alone (prompted by a recent article in the NYT); some thoughts on how chambers of commerce feel anachronistic with their old school networking events “business after hours”; thoughts on the lines between free speech and hate speech (Twitter’s current mess); several paragraphs about feeling depressed (it was a Sunday); etc. etc.
I haven’t been able to stick with any of those threads long enough to finish them, and whenever I’ve returned to them, either the moment/sentiment has passed or my self-aware distaste for naval gazing has halted me. When I’m stuck like this, I usually resort to lists (see above paragraph).
Perhaps writing but not posting is an important or meaningful shift for me. What I mean by that is that over the course of this blog, I’ve often used this space as an outlet and as a place to process. If I thought about it and could write about it (somewhat coherently), it got posted. I generally tried to make those posts about personal feelings mixed with observations of the larger world. I have no idea if they’re ever successful. Quite often I’ve tried to share my anxieties and hang-ups in a way that might allow some reader to say – “oh, I’ve felt that way too” or “I’m pickin’ up what he’s puttin’ down.”
That said, there have been entire parts of my life that weigh heavily on my mind, but I’ve deemed not suitable for public consumption. As examples, I generally don’t write about the specifics of work or colleagues… or I wouldn’t share much about a person I’m dating other than to say I started seeing a new person (I haven’t). Not sharing about work is mostly out of a complicated mix of professionalism and self-preservation. I’ve always been uncomfortable with my colleagues or bosses knowing things about me that I haven’t explicitly shared with them. I try to keep my work life and my private life separate and this space is public. However, not sharing in this space makes me feel a bit like a fraud – as though I profess to live this open and authentic life, yet keep entire sections of it behind closed doors. I suspect a lot of people struggle with the various masks we wear and who gets to see which side of us. It feels as though there’s been an increased demand for or awareness of or desire to show up wholly and fully present in our relationships and in our work. Authenticity, vulnerability, presence. A reasonable question might be, how can we do this if we keep such large parts of ourselves hidden and compartmentalized?
The other day, I was listening to part 2 of Brené Brown’s podcast with guests Simon Sinek and Adam Grant. The three of them were talking about “quiet quitting,” the great resignation, and the many changes we’re experiencing in how we work and how we structure work/life balance. Sinek observed that in the pre-pandemic world, we would go to work, and then maybe go out to the bar and bitch to our friends about work. This, he acknowledges, is normal and healthy… but during the pandemic, all of that had to stop or change. Bars were closed, people were distant, and we couldn’t go anywhere. Sinek observed that with this change, people increasingly found that empathetic ear at work (Grant called these empathetic people toxin handlers). This has been a shift in the work environment and has probably lead to an increase in dissatisfaction with work and work culture. This behavior can lead to a downward spiral in negativity. Though I suspect, on some level, this has always been an aspect of work (talk to anyone who has had a “work wife” or “work husband”).
I suspect for many people, if the bar and work weren’t available venues for venting, the only other outlet was a partner or spouse – which is a lot to unload on one person who we’re also cooped up with twenty-four hours a day. As I contemplated this, I realized that even before the pandemic, I seldom talked about work with friends. For me, that always got dumped on the spouse or the partner or my “work wife,” and for the past six years without that significant other, I’ve basically kept it to myself or occasionally shared/vented with family.
So… what are we to do? For four or five decades (see the book Bowling Alone) America has been experiencing a deterioration in our civic/common culture and landscape – our basic sense of community. We don’t have the social clubs that we used to have. Church membership is at a several decades low. We’ve lost trust in our institutions. We’re more mobile yet confine ourselves to smaller and smaller bubbles. I suspect these changes have only accelerated with the adoption of social media which is anything but social. Our “networks” seems to connect us to more and more people but in an increasingly superficial way (we post for likes and eyeballs and tiny hits of dopamine, but seldom for authentic connection). As a result, we are facing an epidemic of loneliness… which ironically seems to be by choice or by our own doing or by sheer momentum. Rugged individualism in a new era.
Is it possible that with the fall of the traditional patriarchy (which I think is a good thing), we’re experiencing a shift in which more people can be independent? Remember, as recently as the 70s married women had difficulty getting credit cards in their own name. Now, dynamics have shifted. While there are still significant wage gaps between white men and everyone else, we’ve made progress. I know a lot of women who earn more than I do and are far more financially independent than I am (which I think is great – I don’t like zero sum thinking). Brown, Sinek, and Grant all seem to agree that we need each other, but that maybe we’re in a weird space in which how we need each other and how we show up for each other is being redefined. My hope, is that instead of heading down the path of independence, we work towards a greater understanding of interdependence or effective co-dependence (truer more authentic partnerships).
As much as I enjoyed the podcast, I think the three of them missed a critical opportunity in their discussion about quiet quitting. Much of their focus was on what individuals are doing or could do or what managers are doing or could do to avoid this new wave of disengagement… It’s important to consider the psychology of what’s going on at the individual level, but there needs to be equal discussion on the system in which we all function. At one point in the discussion, they turned to the notion of boundaries and Sinek said he sees friction in how we define boundaries. He suggested that we will all have those times when we have to put in extra for work (a weekend here or extra hours there). He said, that’s just work – it will always be that way. He might be right, but I think it’s fair to ask, why? Why does it always have to be that way… or are there ways we can reduce the frequency in which those circumstances arise?
For decades we’ve been sold on the notion that putting in extra is the best and perhaps only way to get ahead. Yet nobody seems to want to acknowledge that “extra” is more or less of a burden depending on your position and a whole lot of external factors. For some employees extra might mean getting up early, finding additional child care, and making a long commute so that they can arrive on time to that out of the way before work networking event (all of which is uncompensated). For others, extra might mean going golfing Friday morning (on the company’s dime) or traveling with first-class accommodations (again on the company’s dime). In both cases, one could argue that this means time away from family and other things that are important, but when one costs you money, time, and emotional capital in making additional arrangements, while the other is paid for and built into the work schedule, we can begin to understand how resentment towards the “fairness” of work and putting in extra builds among people who may simply lack the capacity to get ahead or, worse yet, just break even.
But more than that, the critical point I think they miss is that for many people, there is no break… We finish school and join the race. The finish line is forty or fifty years away – just keep running, and by the way, if you don’t work hard enough, if you’re not ambitious, if you don’t put in extra (aren’t a team player) you may not have enough to survive when you cross that finish line. The thing about the dangling carrot is that it’s intentionally always out of reach. The pandemic, and its subsequent unemployment, forced many people to take a break or slow down. I’m guessing some began to like a slower or different type of race – or that they realized the carrot isn’t getting any closer. Brené began her show mentioning that she just came back from a sabbatical. She was thankful for the time to rejuvenate. This is something most working Americans don’t get to experience. Sabbaticals for the rank and file are costly out-of pocket gaps in the resume that need to be explained to the next employer. For executives, it’s framed as time off to re-balance.
The fact is, in our current system, many people are tied to their jobs. We need work to have healthcare. We need work to get retirement money. We need work to stay alive. None of this is new. Theories such as the iron law of wages (which basically states that employers hold all the cards so long as there’s unemployed labor available) date back to the mid-1800s. In some respects, what we have could be seen as a modernized and gussied up form of indentured servitude. When I hear employers saying that nobody wants to work or blaming the government for giving handouts to keep people afloat, what I’m really hearing is “we used to hold all the cards, and now our cards have been taken away.” This isn’t merely speculation on my part. Back in August, Rep. Jim Banks complained that if the student debt relief goes into action, the military will lose an important recruitment tool (essentially debt and poverty). He said, “Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments.”
I’m not quite sure how employers can be so tone deaf to the notion that if people are quiet quitting, it might be because we have a system that forces people to stay in jobs until they’ve lined something else up… We could just as easily frame it the other way. “I see you’re unhappy here, and it’s starting to impact your work. Let’s figure out an exit strategy so that we both get what we need.” And if an employee is miserable, there’s a reasonable chance they will bring some of that misery and trauma (baggage) into their next position. This seems like an awful, or at least insane way to manage employment on a national level. Unless of course you’re willing to shrug and say that’s just the way it’s always been. But the reality is, these are policy choices. Our unemployment system doesn’t allow you collect if you quit, and doesn’t allow you to collect if it can be proven that you’ve been fired for cause. So for many, the only option is to stick it out (quietly) until something better comes along.
I think America is tired – I know I am. For a long time, we’ve been told that if we work hard, we can get ahead, if we hustle, we can get ahead. And for a lot of people, they followed the rules, they worked hard and they hustled and they’re no closer to the carrot. They took side gigs, some began to adopt FIRE lifestyles (Financial Independence Retire Early)… basically they’ve done anything they can to get off the treadmill. And wanting to get off the treadmill is nothing new. We’ve fantasized about this since the invention of the treadmill. If we didn’t, millions of people wouldn’t play the lottery hoping for an escape. To talk about these things in terms of individuals (workers who are quiet quitting and managers who are in charge of creating a better culture) misses the opportunity to mention some flaws in a system which I suspect a lot of people would like to see changed. To use terms like quiet quitting ignores the fact that for many – until we build a better and kinder and more responsive form of capitalism and work – this is the only option they have.