Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

The world is a happy place, too

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In my continuing effort to counter my own pat negativity, allow me to pass on the observation of a new acquantance, who excused his own workaholism by pointing out that a workplace offers "a relatively stable environment to go to every day."

We individualists and self-made islands may have a hard time admitting, even to ourselves, that we rely on work—and the various goofballs we deal with every day—as a social comfort and as a reassuring physical and mental routine.

But just because we don't like to admit it doesn't mean it's not true.

Your best day working

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It's an old saw on the golf course: "Your worst day golfing is better than your best day working."

For me that's never been true. My worst days golfing are bad, because I feel like I'm wasting my time, and my best days working are fantastic, because I feel at one with the universe.

There are dreary days at the keyboard, but exhilaration happens every week: a far-out story idea is accepted, an interview turns out better than I thought, a story (finally) goes to bed, the issue comes out, something I write generates an unexpected conversation among strangers.

But how many truly wonderful days have I spent working?

Those, in my experience, happen about once per decade.

It's November 1995, and I'm lying on the sofa in Larry Ragan's office at 3:00 a.m., trying to grab a few hours sleep before the graphic designer comes in to lay out the memorial issue I've been working on in the days since he died. I'm using all the skills my mentor taught me in order to honor him. As I try to sleep through the coffee buzz, I think of the line in a James Taylor song, "No one can tell me that I'm doing wrong today."

On a wintry day in 2002, I'm riding in a rusty GMC Jimmy with a struggling standup comic I'm profiling for the Chicago Tribune's Sunday Magazine. We're headed for a two-night gig at a Holiday Inn in Eau Clair, Wis. I'm inhaling the fumes from his Nicorette gum, asking him how he prepares beef stroganoff on a hot plate, and thinking to myself that my competition is exactly no one, because I'm the only asshole in the world who thinks this is heaven.

In spring of this year, I'm holding my first "speechwriting jam session" at a speechwriters conference in Phoenix. I'm playing great speeches and watching the eyes of the writers in the audience fill, as my own eyes fill, as I remember my dead writer dad, who agreed with all of us that communication and love are the same thing.

What was your best moment at work? Communicate it to us.

At least, we ought to stop fearing things that could never, ever happen

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Do you worry a lot about work? About your livelihood, about the intellectual integrity you bring to the job, about the state of your very soul?

I sure do, and I think a lot of that worry is productive. It drives me to work hard and reliably, it makes me bring rigor to every last Twitter tweet, it forces me to respond to the feelings I feel when I do what I do.

Don't worry, be happy? That nonsense had all the staying power of those Baby On Board signs.

But sometimes I worry about things that could never happen.

I should worry about becoming unemployed for a number of reasons, but
not because the last time I was unemployed, all I did was smoke
cigarettes, build plastic model airplanes and watch Cubs games on WGN. I'm no longer 21, I don't smoke, I don't build plastic model airplanes and Harry Carey is dead.

I should worry about doing corporate writing because it takes time from other writing, not because it will immediately transform me into a hack. I've done corporate writing; I have not become a hack.

And I realized recently that I have for years been worried, constantly but almost subconsciously that I would one day become Hal Mattel (name changed to protect the unwitting).

Hal was the first freelance writer I ever knew. He was an old guy with a hawk's beak who visited Chicago once a year. Larry Ragan would shake his hand and give us 20-something editors the corporate credit card and tell us to take Hal to lunch. He would hint that maybe it would be good if we found a story that Hal could do for one of the newsletters. And, more generous with his money than with his time, he would send us on our way.

At lunch, Hal would make small talk for awhile. And Hal could really make small talk. Once somebody ordered French salad dressing, and Hal said, "Salad dressing. That reminds me of a story …." Hal was a nice fellow, but he was terribly boring. And not, we eventually learned, much more interesting in print than in person.

Eventually, he would get around to asking us what our editorial needs were, and whether we had any call for some freelance stuff. And if we could think of anything—he covered the PRSA conference for The Ragan Report once—we'd throw him a bone, knowing that Larry would be glad to pay a couple hundred dollars to do our part keep Hal's dull freelance career chugging along in its sad, mediocre, pointless way.

I realized a while ago that I have long feared becoming Hal Mattel. That fear prevented me from going freelance for awhile. You can't go freelance, because Hal Mattel is a freelancer, and you don't want to end up like Hal Mattel. And it probably makes me overly cautious and deferential in my dealings with writing clients to this day. Without this client, I could wind up like Hal Mattel, going hat-in-hand to every one of my LinkedIn contacts, making up yarns about salad dressing.

There's a lot for writer types to fear these days. Oh, for example, the utter collapse of the writing market. And I'm sure there's a lot for me, specifically to worry about. But becoming Hal Mattel isn't one of them. Before becoming Hal Mattel, I would do any of the following things: find a corporate job … invent something totally awesome … become a greens keeper at a golf course … rob banks … or kill myself.

Any number of those things might be miserable. But they won't have anything to do with becoming Hal Mattel, a perfectly nice man who was built with different materials and by different methods and in a different era than David Murray.

So while worrying isn't stupid, worrying about becoming Hal Mattel is stupid. It's as stupid as Hal Mattel worrying about becoming me. 

What do you worry about that's truly stupid? Let's get it out—right here, and right now, in public, in front of everybody—and let's start worrying about the right things once again.