Conversation With Myself

Q: Haven't seen you around lately. What up?

A: Working my ass off.

Q: Branding, marketing, all that evil shit?

A: Exactly.

Q: You never struck me as a workaholic.

A: I ain't. Maybe you've heard the old Bob Wills tune, "The Devil Ain't Lazy."

Q: ”No sir-ree!”

A: That's the one. ”He works twenty-four hours a daaaay!” Asleep At The Wheel covers it with The Blind Boys of Alabama. It's killer. You know, I caught the lazy rap most of my life. Lazy is a moral judgment. Its function is to shame. As a tentacle of the hallowed "work ethic" Americans love to exalt - while Mexicans do our landscaping and Guatemalan sweatshops crank out fashion apparel - it's pretty darn effective.

Anyway, the label always pissed me off, even when I halfway believed it. After a few decades, it occurred to me I wasn't lazy at all. Sometimes I call myself lazy, but only because it rolls off the tongue, unlike poor time management skills and a rich inner life. I forgot where I was going with that.

Q: Workaholic.

A: Oh, right. No, I'm not a workaholic. I just work a lot. Hours worked are just one aspect of what defines a workaholic. Based on the ones I have known, it comes down to whether or not they construct their entire identity around their occupations. My theory is that it's an avoidance mechanism. An escape. A diversion. They live to work. I work to live. Like everything, there's a gray area. It's a great thing to love what you do for a paycheck. But it ain't who you are.

Q: Do you love what you do for a paycheck?

A: No. What I love is being very good at something I can get paid for. As opposed to trying to shoehorn myself into a cubicle gig on the basis of what's available and who I can trick into hiring me. It's a strange thing to find my commercial niche in my mid-forties.

But what I do? It's The Devil's work. No two ways about it.

My last straight job was as a reinsurance accountant, which I quit in late 2001. Afterward, I tried to get jobs shuffling papers, trimming hedges, crunching numbers. No matter how servile but effective and capable but professionally non-threatening I tried to be, employers wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole. I probably should’ve been wearing sunglasses.

Now I do this.

Most marketing professionals believe their own hype. They've been indoctrinated at a thousand different levels of our malignant culture. I'm only been indoctrinated at, say, five hundred of those levels. Well, seven fifty. But I ditched a third of ‘em over the course of the last ten years. Ironically, the indoctrination gap accounts for why I'm better at it than most of them.

I'm not attempting to claim the moral high ground over my formally educated, institution-loving, dolla-dolla-bill-y'all peers. If anything, I'm even more of a scumbag than they are because I'm acutely aware of what branding and marketing represent, which is manipulation, plain and simple.

My competitors - branding experts, marketing gurus and PR wizards - use flowery terms to describe what they do. They articulate messages and cultivate perceptions and accurately convey the essence of various businesses, products and services. They recoil from the term "propaganda" and find it enormously offensive. These respected, accomplished, talented folks would do well to take a cue from the enterprising drug dealer who rarely or never uses the product.

I’m in the mind control business.

People pay me to use text and graphics to drive sales. It’s a polite form of mind control. Unlike, say, most of what passes for journalism, which is a rude form of mind control.

Oddly enough, one doesn't have to resort to lying, strictly speaking, to influence consumer behavior, although (obviously) many do. Being a lone wolf, I have the freedom to accept or reject clients based on what I can live with. For example, if Taser International offered me a million dollars to design a sidebar ad, I'd tell 'em to kiss my ass. This is why, as good as I am at this kind of work - and I am damn good - I'd prefer to pay the bills in some other manner, although not any other manner.

A week or two ago, somebody was raggin' on me for this line of work. I didn’t mention that chances are great they wear sweatshop clothes and have little awareness of why they selected them. Self-righteousness is hardly an abnormal feature of the human psyche, but it’s really grating when worn like any other fashion apparel. So I responded truthfully: The moral positions with moral employers are in short supply. My experience would indicate they always have been.

Karma is so fucking with me. Espouse a philosophy or an ideal, and, sooner or later, something comes along to test your commitment to it. When your needs and/or wants are being met, integrity is a cheap fucking word. When they aren't, it's a luxury I can’t afford. The trick is to reign in those needs and/or wants so that integrity becomes less cheap. It’s damn hard to do in this in a consumer culture, even if you don’t really have a rapacious appetite for material things.

This week, I got my septic tank pumped and signed an annual contract with the company which inspects the system & certifies the code compliance each quarter. Not cheap. Nor is the dentist. Profuckingpane. Glasses for Mrs. Hill. Vet bills. A mean tax bill from last year, made all the meaner by knowledge of the murder and misery it sponsors. And I’ll have to work a quarter of this year just to clear the tab. It's a good thing I can't find any drugs around here or I'd be up Shit Creek.

Q: Is that all you’re doing? Working?

A: Almost. I’ve gotten some writing done, but nowhere near enough to have any real shape. It’s hard for me to write fiction without becoming completely immersed in it, and my payin’ commitments occupy large chunks of my time. It’s a difficult negotiation.

I’m trying to be mindful about making myself go out every now and then. Dan’s Silver Leaf has an amazing roster of musicians, mostly Americana with the odd foray into jazz. I keep strange hours and tend to refrain from getting shit-faced (only because I hate hangovers), so there’s no reason not to go out. Denton has a little avant-psychedelic music scene, and it’s kinda fun to get out and meet people who are doing their own thing. Because I’m as old or older than their parents, it’s interesting to see how they react to an invader from outside their pack.

It is truly remarkable how segregated we all are. Race. Class. Age. I got to thinking about how unfortunate it is, and why, in American culture, it’s such a hard, well-defined segregation. Which led me right back to my profession. The society in which nothing matters but commerce has zero use for individuals and every use for demographics. Divide and conquer. Rich, poor, middle class. Old, young, middle-aged. Educated, uneducated, self-educated. All that matters is which slot we fit into so that every last cent can be shaken from our pockets. The only mitigating factor is that so many of us make our living shaking every last cent from each other’s pockets. Which doesn’t sound too bad until the term “pyramid scheme” is factored into the whole fucked-up mess.

Because I’m making an effort to color outside the lines, I’ve been exploring online communities which are atypical of those I am naturally inclined to visit. It’s been an interesting exercise. It takes some finesse to navigate, but I’ve managed to avoid eviction while ringing a bell or two, so I’m doing alright.

Q: Why are you talking to yourself?

A: Because it’s easier than writing several dozen emails saying the same thing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.