Open letter to a picture of myself back in cubicle life, 2003-ish.
What up, dude!
This picture popped up in the “Memories” section of your Facebook, which is a dumb invention you don’t know about yet. The link connected to an interview your buddy David will conduct.
Lookit you, Corporate-America-style. (Kinda.)
Weird to take in two decades later. Working on a beer account, hoo-boy. The array of promotional bottles and cans, as well as competitors’ products, gave your cube a hobo-esque feel. Cool to check out the Clerks poster again. And the string of plastic flowers that were bunched up in some hallway trashcan until you saw them and realized your workspace needed pretty flowers to brighten things up because pretty flowers do that kind of thing. The thrift-store lamp is barely visible to one side and the orange thrift-store chair sits in the lower corner of the shot. And your Mac. I’ll fill you in on SJD in part II.
This pic, that world, makes me think of a short story. Its spark came from early drafts of our dark comedy about 2000 to 2010. The quick vignette died in editing. This spastic character showed up in the book out of the blue, then disappeared and the scene just didn’t belong. A year or so after releasing Fearkiller (Volume 1), you revisited that brief moment in fictional time and expanded it into “Back to Work.”
Fiction-writin’ and copywritin’, it’s been a ride. Twenty years…wow. Let’s catch you up, 2003ish-Me. I’ll start with happy news.
Rush Limbaugh died. Donald Rumsfeld died. Dick Cheney…he’s almost dead. And Henry Kissinger died a few weeks ago. So it’s not all bleakness in the future.
With that said, unfortunately Osama bin Laden won, my dude. Here, you’re about two years after 9/11 and Iraq had fallen into chaos. Afghanistan barely showed up in the news because it was already a quagmire. Still, you were a believer. The red-white-and-blue USA vision in your head would materialize and make sense of September 11th, 2001 for all to see, you just knew it.
Dipshit.
Rentier economists pow-wowed with trickle-down economists and the boys cooked up a cash-grab.
As the 9/11 20th anniversary nears, your sadness will fire up a post. You’ll write more…the subject matter weaves in with many problems. Those with too much money and influence took advantage of that horrible day and only get more fascist as the years advance. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, 2003ish-Me.
Though you do see progress and evolution. It isn’t all bleak. At the same time, toxic positivity serves no purpose because the mood is ominous in this stupid kind of way. One big difference between you and I: I am open about the ugliness that you also saw plain as day. This white nationalist, patriarchal bullshit existed back then. Only not enough people spoke out so it had a chance to breathe. Braver folks got too much flack when they brought up uncomfortable realities. Others, like you, were good at reminding people not to talk politics.
Much of the professional world — you included — gaslit, tone-policed, sealioned, and concern-trolled the bejeezus out of one another. This pic reeks of that energy (along with the previous evening’s booze.) But your mind isn’t crazy, dude. Just manipulated and scared like many were. This Fast Company article from the future, 80% of Workplaces Are Toxic, says a lot.
And speaking of your “we’re not a company, we’re a family” company, some families sure do downsize family members on a regular basis. Yeesh. Eventually, the holding company is going to shutter it, fold existing accounts into other entities. Yachts, right? They just held a final shindig, which you didn’t attend. The theme was “Last Call.” You don’t drink anymore.
Undiagnosed gambling disorders and late-stage capitalism are an evil mix. Systemic inequality is worsening., 2003ish-Me. The forces that guided the USA’s initial centuries were far from perfect. That said, much of the positivity from our country’s earlier times is missing in 2023.
“Positive qualities”…you know…like a middle-class. Over the last fifty or so years, the adage the customer is always right got twisted into Fuck customers. The investor is always right.
As inequality worsened get a load of this: low-rent rich folks will use a worldwide pandemic to line their pockets even further.
Kakistocracy is the name of the game as we begin 2024. Our current President is doing a decent job of fighting it but systemic corruption still obstructs.
Some days, you have zero faith in us humans. Others, this burning belief inside says that we are about to bust through and reach a new state of being. The turbulence is part of the “darkness before the dawn” thing, you get it — you don’t like it and wish the dawn would fucking get here already — but you get it.
To put it another way, yeah, your mind is still a roller coaster and it is not known if train tracks ever existed beneath the cars’ wheels in the first place. Not much has changed. You’re still one extreme to the other and back again.
Like I said, I’ll talk about the Mac on your desk further in Part II. In the meantime, here are other long-winded “Open letter to myself” posts. Take a look if you want. Did one when I turned 50. Wrapping my head around taking drinking to the edge. Seeing my first book in a store for the first time.
You could never see yourself writing public, navel-gaze types of things. But you sucked back then.
Just sayin’. (That was a saying in 2003, wasn’t it?)
Also posted on my website. Some earlier posts:
• NYC vacay. May, 2003.
• Operation Week Off
• ID photos should look stupid.
• A thank you, from me to Rush Limbaugh..
• Intersection of Memory Lane and Flashback Avenue.
I also write fiction. I have two dark comedies available, Fearkiller (Volume 1) and Notes from Trillionaire Island: Fearkiller (Volume 2), as well as Revolutionizer Alpha, the first book in a sci-fi series. I also wrote a story about God. It was weird, but then I decided to make the story and its sequel free. And all of the sudden, it didn’t seem as weird. Writing about God is much less weird when you write about God without charging money for it.
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