8. So, What Do You Do?
The Year of Paying Attention
In many cultures and some circles, it’s rude to ask — what do you do? For most of my working life, I welcomed the question, because I liked the answer: I worked in radio, or TV, for a station or show or network the asker had heard of. It wasn’t accurate, but to most people I was in show business. I’d say Eyewitness News, or Jeopardy! or The Oprah Winfrey Show, Inside Edition, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, Bridezillas, Mad Men, Portlandia, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and you might assume I’m pals with Oprah or Regis or meth dealers or zombies. I was cool. Now that I’m out of the business, I don’t have an answer I like.
I spent months “processing” what had happened, working with (and paying, to make it real) my coach friend Billy, who explained patiently, as if to an anxious 8-year-old leaving on a class trip to Ellis Island, that first I was going to be finished with my old job, then I was going to think about what I wanted to do now, then I was going to see what happened!
A few years before I was canned from my final job, a fellow I’ll call Doug (not as funny as Giuseppe, but it’ll do) rang my office to see if I was interested in a new, fancy TV job. I already had one, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t interested, but sure, let’s talk, I said. Doug bought lunch, whispered some sweet nothings in my ear. I said he was awful nice but I was in a committed relationship. When he got down on one knee and asked if I’d just meet his boss the CEO, I said, well, okay. Back at my office I did my best to let it slip that I was still pretty enough to turn the head of another, but nobody in the C Suite gave a shit. I had drinks with the CEO, batted my eyes a bit, and told him I was flattered, but I was taken. He moved on.
Jump ahead three years, and I’m now out to pasture. Billy has calmed me down, and I’m ready for something different and new! I’m in that famous hallway, one door closed behind me, while I wait for another door to swing open. My phone rings. It’s Doug, asking me to lunch. I looked in the mirror and pulled in my cheeks — looks like I still have it, I tell myself. Over steak salad, Doug admitted he’d hired the wrong guy last time. Now that I was available, he wanted to talk some more about that job. Did I want to talk? Sure! Let’s talk! We walked out of the restaurant, and I thought — maybe I’m not done after all!
Instantly my excitement turned to nausea. My mind began to race — how can I con Doug into offering me this job? Another voice piped up — it sounded like Billy my coach. It was Billy my coach, who I’d called. Why are you so worked up? Do you need this job? Who called who? I took a deep breath and went back into work mode.
I called friends who had inside information. Oh, I was told, confidentially, was it a mess! The person they’d hired was bad! I’d be so much better! What’s more, I had a couple of brilliant friends who could help me not just fix everything, but make the department The Best Department Ever! I would author one of those self-serving LinkedIn articles — “How To Fix A Fucked-Up Situation, Be Awesome and Make Everybody Happy and Love You!”
Doug told me the process was going to take a little time; he had to arrange for the problem to go away; he had to get the new CEO (not the guy I had drinks with — he, too, had been put out to pasture) on board; he had some tinkering to do with company structure. No problem, I told him — I’m here to help, Doug, ready whenever you need me. Okay, he said, in the meantime you should meet my boss. In LA. An audition. A new wave of nausea hit me.
Days later I flew to LA, my suit and shiny shoes packed, and once there I remember what’s odious about this city and the television industry, making my way to the glittering offices decorated with TV show posters, where I was ushered in to meet this boss who didn’t know me from Adam, and who appeared to want to keep it that way. As we chatted, he gave me the unmistakable stink eye. Wait I minute, I thought, we’re in LA, you’re supposed to mask your contempt and lie with smiles and warmth! I staggered to my hotel room, undone, and shot an email to Doug — “I don’t think your CEO likes me.”
Nonsense! Doug reassured me, that’s just how he comes off to everybody! Doug was himself heading west, and we’d have a wonderful dinner together the following night. And so we did, steaks from cows raised in Japan, lovingly massaged and sung to before willingly offering up their lives to honor Important TV Executives. The accompanying fries were superior. Licking the salt from my lips, I didn’t realize that I’d taken the bait, hook, line and sinker, and was wriggling in Doug’s net. I wanted that job — not just to rescue the creative team who’d been frustrated and stymied for the past few years, but to hire my brilliant friends to assist in the transformation, while I, Zen Master of the Creative Process, humbly choreographed from the shadows. I knew what was called for, how to motivate teams of writers, directors, editors, how to define the goals, how to spot good ideas, protect them and turn them into campaigns — plus that bean-counting bastard at the old job, who’d given me my walking papers, he’d know, indisputably, that he’d made a gross error in letting me go! But it would be too late!
As the full-fat desserts arrived, Doug leaned over and murmured, “Maybe you can put together a little presentation of how your process works? I think that will help me convince my boss.” And I was again plunged into a fearful darkness.
On my flight home the next day, I was in a rage. Then I noticed I was scared. I called Coach Billy. “So tell me, what do you want? And what are you afraid of?” he asked me. I wanted the job offer. And I was afraid I wasn’t going to get it. He reminded me that I wasn’t desperate, and that what Doug wanted wasn’t such a big deal. Oh yeah, that’s true, I thought. Back home, I put my thinking in order. I did some writing. I organized my own ad hoc creative team, dependable friends, to help me. I knew what to do. We came up with a slew of good ideas. Over a couple of weeks, we assembled a final presentation. It was killer. Oh — right. This is what I know how to do. This is why my former employer kept paying me to come in.
I sent it to Doug. I waited. And waited. I wasn’t anxious anymore, but excited. My friends and I had gone well above and beyond the assignment. I wanted feedback. And when Doug finally rang me, I got it. He didn’t mention the long delay, nor did he say anything about the range of ideas. He started giving me notes, ways to tune it up, take out some stuff, make it more of what his boss would want to see, he said.
Right on cue, the trombone player in my head played the cartoon diminuendo: Wah, waahhh, waaaaaaaaah. Of course, I thought, as Doug spitballed a few improvements to the presentation, mostly by taking out the big ideas, the audacious ones that would get noticed. The image became crystal clear, the picture of what the job really was: to make Doug, this pompous ass, look good, and to satisfy his sour-faced boss. I’d been conning myself, expecting this opportunity was a way to confirm my value. Jobs don’t do that. Bosses don’t do that. Only I can do that, by knowing what’s true. The whole seemingly fruitless process had a big payoff, bigger than I’d imagined. I felt my imposter syndrome melting away. It wasn’t harps and angels, exactly. I wasn’t going to be offered this job. And I didn’t want it. I can’t remember how the phone call ended, probably something about Doug getting back to me with more specific directions, but that didn’t trouble me, because I was done.
It took weeks, possibly months for Doug to send me an email, explaining how his department was being reorganized, and how the position we’d discussed had been eliminated. No surprise. I was embarrassed, a little, having told a few friends about it, all of whom later asked what happened. Oh that? It went away, I told them.
Next week: The Horror of Doing Nothing
