Remember who you are

My first job out of school, I worked as a direct mail copywriter. This was in a time before the public internet, before AOL changed the way we relate to our computer screens. Every day, I produced writing for paper-based campaigns—catalogs, postcards, brochures, and the direct mail standard, the four-page letter. My stock in trade  was nutritional supplements. I sold coenzyme Q10 and ginkgo biloba and bilberry to the elderly, siberian ginseng and St. John’s wort and ashwagandha to folks in their 30s and 40s, and creatine and amino acid combinations to the sportier set. I worked with research scientists, legal teams, graphic designers, and marketing pros.

I loved it. Words circulated around me all day long—which, with my BA in Creative Writing, satisfied my inventive side. I found myself drawn to marketing, too, to understanding the ways that words can change response, to the long tradition of formal content, and to the ways that subtly breaking form can enhance its effectiveness.

The company thrived for a long time, and I very much enjoyed the regular challenges of my work there, but eventually I grew restless, wanting to explore other areas of advertising copywriting. One day, seeking advice, I met my older brother for breakfast. 

Chad worked in public relations, in what to my 20-something mind seemed a high-powered downtown-with-an-office-and-window job. I wanted to know how to market myself, how to design a strong portfolio, how to interview with confidence.

He told me this: “Always think of yourself as an independent contractor. Remember that the company works for you as much as you work for them. It’s an agreement, but you are not subject to them. Remember your value. Remember who you are.”

His advice struck home, and changed my relationship to work from that breakfast onward—it fed my naturally rebellious spirit, and as my career took me from one field to another, I did what I could to pass on his message. I took this perspective into each job after that, and into my study as a graduate student too. 

When I moved on to teaching, this advice became part of my practice when I recognized that Chad had described agency, the concept that forms  the foundation of critical pedagogy. Agency in that tradition is the ability of a human being to actively participate in their own transformation and the transformation of their social context. I encouraged in my students an independence of thought—which often became a relentless resistance to what Freire called “objective reality,” or that construct of reality that the reality-makers want us to believe. 

Agency, though, can be a tough road to walk. It can be lonely to live life as an independent contractor in the world. Humans are social animals, and we bend toward living in community. We develop technologies for staying in touch with one another—roads and telephone poles, the postal service and social media. We look for a community where we will find “our people,” and we hope to stay amongst them as long as possible. But the spark of insight that can lead us in a new direction can sometimes take us away from our communities, or turn them away from us.

Inside a workplace, agency can look confrontational, objectionable, and uncooperative; it can also look pioneering, inspirational, forward-thinking—depending a great deal on the organizational culture and leadership, not to mention the appeal or un- of the ideas that we’re using our agency to fight for. There are ways of slipping agency in; and just as the right words can change customer response, so too can intentional conversation and collaborative action shift attitudes and perspectives within a workplace.

But regardless of how it’s applied, the one thing I’ve come to learn about agency is that, when it’s been felt once, it is inevitable. When we realize we are independent contractors—working alongside but not for others—we can rarely shrug off that mantle without discomfort.

***

I was recently laid off—as of this writing, four weeks and just a few days ago. I’ve never been laid off before, so I’m grappling a bit with the experience of it. I was one of many at the company where I worked to be impacted, which is becoming a commoner and commoner experience today. Indeed this is a time when there is a veritable subculture of the Laid-Off. So I’ve had plenty of folks to talk to, to listen to, to encourage and be encouraged by over the past few weeks.

One of my former teammates likened the feelings of layoff to being dumped by someone you’ve been dating. There’s a similar experience of shock (“Why did they leave?”), of grief (“I miss the sound of their footsteps”), of indignation (“How dare they leave me?”), of questioning (“Could I have done something to prevent this?”), and a desire to return to what once was.

Every job, and every relationship, is a process of building. At the job, we build projects, aim toward objectives, construct strategies. Our work asks us to improvise, to invent, to construct, to set goals, to be ambitious, to feel inspired. We look into the future to what the business will become, how our teams will grow, how the product will improve, and who will join our audience. 

But we also build ourselves: we learn new skills, we challenge ourselves to be better leaders and employees, we get creative in our approach to new initiatives, we hone our problem solving skills. 

As a copywriter, I learned my craft by doing it, and I developed a deeper understanding of myself as a writer, as a colleague, as a collaborator. And at my most recent job, I grew my skills as a leader by building up others, crafting new strategies, and watching for opportunities to make my team invaluable.

In a relationship, the same thing happens: we set goals—house, children, marriage, vacations—and we go about constructing a life together. We build our relationship by shifting our context to include someone else, to test the boundaries of self and significant other—their needs and our own. And we learn the craft of relationship by doing it, developing a deeper understanding of ourselves next to and mirrored back by another.

Which is why the end of a relationship—and the experience of layoff—can bring up questions about who we are now. Absent the daily litmus test of a job or other half, we have only ourselves to understand ourselves by. When we speak, it’s not conversation but echo that returns. 

Layoff is not an experience of agency, at least not immediately. There’s a choicelessness to it, a decision made that impacts us deeply but about which we were not consulted or given voice. Like coming home and finding your partner has packed and gone, the sudden vacancy and solitude can be unexpectedly brutal. There’s a gap, a space, and it feels empty. We were building, and now the foundation has been shook.

But agency is inevitable, and in that empty space, we can begin building again; when we do, we discover that the emptiness is not empty at all, but crowded with everything we’ve accomplished that remains our own. Who we were in our jobs is not so different from who we are without our jobs. We are more than a set of skills, more than a series of deadlines, and greater than the sum of our cross-functionality. Where once our job did, now our life asks us to improvise, to invent, to construct, to set goals, to be ambitious, to feel inspired.

To remember our value, and to remember who we are.

Photo by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash