Caterwauling

I’ve said this 4,000 times over the past month.

After every work induced heartbreak (all 4,000 of them), I reminded myself, I am in no danger of being promoted.

They will keep finding dopey white guys to put above me.

There is no way I will get the title I coveted.

And I stopped caring about that a long time ago.

And when the thought occurred to me during my last shitty performance review — when I dared to suggest that maybe I might hit the “up or out” phase soon — I was met with “well if you need more words in your title, fine” and “then go come up with a way to earn commission” … I knew, this ain’t it.

But I DO care. I DO love it. And I’m very worried that if there isn’t some reward at the end of *gestures vaguely* all this … be it the title I wanted, or the Disney employee event … OR BOTH .. I will not be of any value to us because I will be in a goddamn mental asylum.

I’ve even gotten to the point with my staff, not saying it directly, but like hey, if you never hear it from anyone else, I love you and I’m so proud of you.

I hope they hear it. I hope they feel it. But at this point, I hope hearing it from me is enough.

I’m just so pissed off I have to work from Pittsburgh.

I don’t even know when I’m going to be able to visit my grandparents’ grave.

I forgot to order the gravestone.

I mean it’s been 24 years, what’s another lifetime.

But still.

This place has gotten more of me than it deserves.

And to have my millennial manager thinking I haven’t given/don’t give enough?

But that Heifer has?

(Though I’d like to think they are smarter than that.)

I just don’t even know.

Maybe it’s the bottle of Franciscan talking.

But … I don’t really know what more I can do.

I wasn’t done with work on Friday around 5:30. But I was ready to sign off with immense relief that we doubled free content … survived untold amounts of technical difficulties … and lived through six bonus meetings (on top of the regular 10).

Then the boss made sure to remind me that something wasn’t done. (Out of the 14.) And when I said there were some technical difficulties — as Teams shit the bed — he said well you guys didn’t track changes and we need to track changes.

BRO.

When you gave me this shit pile of an assignment, which I will generously call 5,000 words of AI slop, not once did anyone say track changes.

I hired the industry’s best editor.

Who has enjoyed the project.

But who has also struggled with redoing the AI and checking the 47 footnotes that AI found.

Now, normal Goddess would be like you’re gonna love it now leave me to it.

But Goddess who slept a grand total of 12 hours over the WEEK from all the extra hours and panic attacks has some words for you.

Most of which are under five letters.

I was going to sign off on this Friday night not with a clean slate, but with satisfaction.

Instead, I signed off with wine and an hour worth of tears.

I am so tired. So tired. SO TIRED.

I worked so hard.

I tried so hard.

And the no tracked changes thing killed me.

I gray rocked and said this person did an amazing edit — they loved the content, they treated it with care, they enjoyed the fact checking very much — but I was like for fuck’s sake, I hired the best person for the job and they are only slow because it wasn’t as good as you thought it was. But the first draft I saw from them was actually readable and draft 2 is going to be so much better. God bless them and they deserve a medal.

Then I thought fuck it, I deserve a medal. My whole team does.

And I cried a bunch more.

I remember when we were in college. We’d ask each other what we were going to do that night or the next day.

And we’d reply, “I’m going to kill myself, then I’m going to go get a sandwich.”

Now, one of us actually DID kill ourselves.

So I keep reminding myself not to say that.

And I think, god, all those times we laughed when she said she was going to kill herself.

Then she did.

And I can count on 17 hands how many times I said to myself this week, “I should just kill myself.”

Even Claude has picked up on it. And i’ve had to ask him to quit sending me mental health resources.

But … at what point does someone snap and decide, well, I could go into my second performance review of the year being told how I’m not doing enough …

While I’m ready to kill myself because I am tired of not being honored for doing what I do?

Like if I can just stomp on a treadmill and plan one event a year, or if I can fart out one trade every six months when everyone else is doing it once a week … but then I as the manager am held accountable for their performance … what if I just offed myself and the cats and left my cousin to donate my shit to Habitat …

Why don’t I?

This isn’t the wine. The wine is keeping me FROM killing myself. As are the cats. Like Maddie prevented my suicide attempt in 2004.

I’m not done with life. But I’m done with white men who make me want to be.

I was thinking about dead weight guy and Mythic Bitch.

How I have not known many marketers who are worth a good god damn in this field.

How most of the editorial people I’ve met have been unsung heroes.

And how marketers are Peter Principle’d to the highest heights … while ED people are just dogs begging not to get kicked today.

As I was up at 4 am panic editing, these thoughts came to me. Not for the first time. But cohesively.

Fucking Mythic Bitch — she’s over there feeling smug because she is on vacation and still checked in to shoot me down.

We all work on vacation, that isn’t impressive. My team writes entire newsletters on PTO because that’s the only fucking time no one is pinging us on Teams.

Except my boss — he seems to have an innate sense for when my two managing editors are out — that’s the only time they hear from him.

Look, we all know I hate Mythic Bitch for all those public excoriations she did of me.

But that faded after I quit caring.

I just hate her now because she stands on that stupid treadmill, bragging like Al Bundy about that fucking high school football game, crowing about her one achievement a year.

Which as I’ve pointed out, happens because we have a very experienced travel agency that does a lot of heavy lifting.

I called a fellow director yesterday who is KILLING me with busy work.

My boss claimed he didn’t know why I was getting all this new shit to edit.

My friend said we were TOLD to give it to you.

I was like brother, we were all full time busy before this. Delighted to accommodate this.

(It feels like someone thinks none of us are busy enough. Which … having non-writers send me a bonus 5,000 words a day — but not send THEIR SERVICES ANY ACTIONABLE TRADES — is a weird way to “fix” that but ok. I got you. And I still fucking want TRADES. I never wanted to commit to cranking out more free content whilst the paid isn’t where it needs to be.)

Instead of me being forced to meet with my own team 36 times a month … maybe we could have all talked to EACH OTHER first to get the process down?

Anyway I got to thinking in the shower about the employee event.

You know who I want to see work harder? Mythic Bitch.

Renting a fucking hotel no one else wants because who wants to sit in a hotel in Boca Raton … IS EASY.

Icebreakers are free.

I mean, we may end up at another stupid golf thing because that’s all there is to do in the Palm Beaches.

But, easy.

Calling Disney and getting professional event organizers to structure awards ceremonies and useful team building?

Effort.

I reached out to Disney last night.

I will die on this hill that it is easy to outshine heather. That’s why she’s such a pain in the ass. She’s insecure AF.

The only effort she puts into anything is making sure we don’t take her commissions.

She actually used that word at some point. and it clicked. she is commissioned.

Not me and my managing editors, who read/edit/write 200,000 words a week.

I will plan you fucking event FOR FREE — HAPPILY — to prove an actually busy person can do something the staff will love.

The good news is, more people have heard about my sinister plan to not waste our weekend. And I have 100% buy-in.

One of my fellow friends here just said look, boss favors nose to grindstone people.

I’m like OK so what’s saving MB then?

Also, I’ve had my nose to the grindstone for too many years. I finally found balance and boundaries. Maybe I took a little extra here and there to make up for the years of abuse. But I have never NOT been on top of my game (other than boss’ pet project that I still haven’t fucking worked on whilst working on this new onslaught from the research department).

For real — I haven’t even been as involved in a product launch as I normally would be. My staff have been angels about it. Angels!

They deserve Disney.

They deserve a good management team.

They deserve recognition.

They deserve to not absolutely want to die every day like we all have this week.

And what do I do best? It’s not edit. It’s lead.

And if my time here isn’t valuable enough to millennial management, then I walk out with my head held high.

And I’ll head straight to Disney, either way.