The Work Mixtape

After five attempts at some sort of personal essay about work, I am waving the white flag. I’ve said all I want to say about my own career journey and am lucky enough to be in a job I absolutely love. (Nobody wants to hear from the happy person). 

I tried to write about well-intentioned wealthy white women (The W Squad!) who keep stepping in front of people of color to profit off of social justice. But if you can find a way to do that without preaching a well-worn sermon, please email me. 

I tried to apply a broad brush to women in their late 40s and how they feel about career paths but that was… boring. 

I even, in one desperate attempt, tried to build something off of Billy Porter’s Emmy acceptance speech last week? Not sure what that was about. (Also, note to self: see the W Squad comment above). 

So I’ve landed on the only thing I can do at this point—take other people’s content from around the web and make pithy comments about it. The wildly uneven power structures of the average workplace can grind you down if you’re not careful. But until we move to a barter economy - if the sun doesn’t melt us first - you gotta have a job. So here are some distractions for those days when you want to pull an Aniston in Office Space (perhaps the most satisfying quitting scene ever).

When you feel like your job is sucking your brain dry, take a gander at these pictures of mathematicians’ blackboards and thank Jeebus that these aren’t your to-do list. I can’t decide which is my favorite:

The one that appears to have calculated how donuts explode

Or the elegant simplicity of what is apparently an inside-math joke

Or let’s say you’re feeling especially exploited at your workplace. Have a read-through of this description of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and be very grateful that you were born after this book sparked the worker’s rights movement.

Feel like your creative juices have dried up quicker than our ever-thirsting planet? Watch Dave Brubeck throw a wrench into square-dancing by trying to fit it into 7/4 time meter—and it kinda works. (But also, entertainment was weird as hell back then.)

Writing skills got you down? Laugh at someone else’s inept grammar. More to the point, enjoy  my boyfriend R. Eric’s parsing of what is possibly the most confoundingly written tweet in… the last 3 days.

I find something annoyingly satisfying about those Buzzfeed Tweeticles(™) - endless lists of funny tweets about a common theme. It’s like a little standup comedian sitting on your shoulder, cracking one-liners. If you’re of the same mind and need a break from TPS reports, here are several for you.

Last but very-much-not least, I’m writing this on October 1st so...Welcome to autumn, fuckheads!