It’s Wednesday and I feel hideous. I will make myself look as absurd as possible to cover up.
It is a somewhat miraculous fact that I have managed to make it nearly a quarter-century without being despised by a single person. I should probably add, “that I know of,” to that sentence. I am sure I have been and am envied; I ought to be. I do not believe in luck, but I am not so black-and-white to deny that I meet the popular definition of “lucky.” That being said, I have felt a little rotten over the past two days, and by god, this is a blog and I’m going to talk about it!
I suppose it all began…no, that isn’t quite right. I suppose I noticed this emotional discomfort while idled at a red light. Across the street were a pair of people arguing over a fender-bender. I find witnessing minor accidents to be emotionally excrutiating in a very particular way. Whereas in major accidents, people are just relieved to be alive, minor accidents always seem to contain one member of the party trying to retain a bit of dignity by denying fault - “You stopped short!” they’ll accuse. These excuses are fruitless and they know it. Yet instinct makes them do it.
It seems to me that dignity - sometimes considered pride - is the quality within ourselves for which we are most unflaggingly protective. Why is humiliation such an effective punishment? Because it is the sudden and forced stripping away of dignity. What is someone without their dignity? Who are we without the dignity that defines us?
Have I mentioned explictly on here what it is that I do at my new job? I can’t remember. I do a jumble of things, but in short, I am a proofreader at an advertising agency. Each day I watch people as they’re told their ideas aren’t good enough, that they are not eloquent enough, that they simply don’t do enough. Sometimes the bruising of dignity leads to a greater end-product - I understand and appreciate this. Yet, no matter how tactfully criticism is given, watching someone try to fully retain their dignity is heartbreaking.
The most difficult thing about my position is that it is my job to nitpick and sound like a know-it-all. This isn’t my character and I often find myself apologizing for doing my job. It’s stupid, I shouldn’t do it. But I feel that with each request for a change, I am threatening the receiver’s dignity. I’ll sometimes get carried away with suggestions and despise myself for it later - like, say, tonight. I hate myself tonight, and I doubt it is even necessary. My hope is that everyone understands that my job is to criticize only to the extent that I want to make their work the best it can possibly be. I hope I am tactful, but sometimes I doubt it. And all the time I feel like a complete fool because I am telling people who have been in the industry years and decades longer than I, who have made names for themselves without a nagging proofreader, that they have been doing it wrong all along. Your success has been a fraud.
Most of the time I feel exhilarated to do what I do. But days like today leave me feeling like an asshole. And for the first time in my life, I feel that at any moment, I’m going to run across the first person who will say they despise me.
But if this and an out-of-tune ukulele are my two greatest worries, then I am what many of you call lucky.
Also, P.S.: I realize I am a proofreader and probably make the greatest number of errors as anyone you know on Tumblr, but, c’mon, I doubt I need to remind this is blogging - not an excerpt from my unconsidered novel.
