MEDIA CULTURE
It’s Not Always About You
And the sooner you get your head out of your ass, the better
As a rookie journalist I had to endure many editors. Part of the training included being shuffled around like a parcel, at each stop an editor peeled a layer of wrapping and pasted some of their wisdom to you. By the time I got to lifestyle editor named Judith, she was the first female boss.
Judith was temperamental. Imagine seeing someone holding a teacup filled to the brim with tea and the hand is shaking violently. The shaking is Judith’s mood swings, and whatever tea left in that cup is everyone else’s patience. Outside at the smoking section the men would make jokes about her.
“That one needs to get laid.”
“No wonder she has no man. She probably killed him.”
“How can a dried up prune last this long?”
“She makes me fart, cry and pee at the same time.”
“God gave up on that one.”
I could go on but you get the point. If you were a man she’d reduce the size of your testicles. If you were a woman, she’d reduce you to tears. It was the way she was.
Judith however, was a brilliant writer. No doubt she got her job as editor because she was good at her work. Her social skills was left to be desired. Her eye for literature and what tugs the human heart is something else. She was meticulous. She was always early for work and as far as I could remember, she never took a sick day. Her work was her life. She was just eccentric.
And now came my turn to report duty to her as my editor.
My work mindset is simple. If my editor tells me to deliver four articles a week, I deliver six. Or seven. During editorial meetings, when we are asked to present ten ideas, I present fifteen. When asked a question, I answer with thought and respectfully. When the editors are going mental throwing objects across the room, I watch, keep my eye contact with my bosses and I smile. I don’t look down, I don’t look away and to tell you the truth, it makes the meetings a lot more interesting when it’s gone south.
As a rookie writer, my role was to listen and learn. Who was I to say anything when these editors were Goliaths. I was no where close to David. I was a petite girl who was told on my first day at work, “Your Master’s degree has no meaning here with zero experience so you join the back of the line, little girl.”
With no byline you had no worth. You know where you stood and it was rank and file. You don’t complain because there was nothing worthy to complain about. In that sense, working life was pretty simple. I started work at 9am and I finished by 4pm. After four, my life began and I did whatever I want. I was the boss of my own decisions.
One day editor Judith yelled across the floor and called for me. If you know anything about the reporting desk, it’s an open floor concept. You shared everything: from desk, desktop to stationeries. “Only your brain and your ass belongs to you,” said my first editor. “If I’m lucky, my writers bring both to the office.”
Judith was in a foul mood.
As I walked across the room nearing her, my colleagues snickered and made faces at me.
“You’re so screwed Natasha.”
“What the hell did you do?”
“Thanks Nat for wrecking the rest of our day by twisting Judith’s knickers.”
I shrugged and said nothing. In my head I was scratching my brain. What could be the issue? Did I miss something? How fucked am I fucked?
I stood a meter adjacent to Judith. She faced her terminal pounding the keyboard like how one would stab a lover in a crime of passion. Boy, was she mad. I thought to myself, How I wish I could find her a handsome lover so she could be at the Caribbean on a permanent vacation.
Without looking at me, she raised her voice and proceeded to excrement her thoughts like the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”. If you don’t know how that sounds like, here’s a taster:
Unfortunately, her shrilling session went on longer that the Queen’s aria. About six to seven minutes. Judith the banshee was shrieking and howling about how the piece I submitted was pathetic. It was tardy like a last minute job which insulted her intelligence. It was a gross disappointment that the piece could not represent the newspaper. She was appalled that should anyone ask, it would be said that she was the editor. “People out there will think I produced writers of such low quality!”
Meanwhile, I looked up and saw my male colleagues air clapping and giving me a thumbs up sign. Across the room in the far end, one of them was doing the running man gesture mock laughing at me. I raised my hand pretending to fix my hair while showing them my middle finger. Judith was still on fire like a dry field during a drought and a careless asshole dropped a lighted cigarette and drove off.
After almost a good seven minutes of ranting served to me on a silver platter, Judith turned and look at me.
“Oh, Natasha it’s you. What do you want?”
“Yes Judith, it’s me and I hear you loud and clear.”
“Was I yelling at you the whole time?”
“Yes you were.”
“Oh, I called the wrong person. I meant to call Sabrina. Could you call her for me.”
“Sure.”
“So, is my piece okay?”
“Yes, yours is fine. Call Sabrina.”
Now I can take that seven whole minutes and wear it like a scar and cry to the ample bosom of the world. I could run to the lavatory, bury my head in the toilet bowl and cry in shame. I could say that was humiliating. I could think to myself, I've been desecrated in front of my peers. I could go on a rampage and explain myself to my colleagues about the misunderstanding, and fearing they might not get it and to overcome my shame, repeat my explanation for as many times till their ears bleed. I could go on my blog and shit my brains out literary style and cry me a river of woe. I could think about quiet quitting since there is no respect passed around to rookie writers. I could start writing my resignation letter. I could start composing a complaint letter about my editor and send to the human resource manager.
I did none of that.
Instead, I went out and bought Judith coffee and a box of doughnuts. I wrote her a note: Thank you for being an inspiration.
I made Judith cry instead.
That, my friends, is called strategy. It’s how adults deal with the real world that by default is already unfair, cruel and unjust. Sure, Judith made a mistake. No one would believe — or care — she was at fault because it was more entertaining — and memorable — to see a fellow writer get her ears chewed than praised for a job well done. A senior editor once said during training, “Getting the job done well IS your job. You can’t expect praises for every jump and for surviving the obstacle course. What are you? A performing monkey? A circus pony?”
Despite her hormonal imbalance and whatever past traumas she suppressed, the best advice Judith taught were the following: Not everything in this world is about you. Being a writer you illuminate dark places. People who prefer darkness to light will say and throw things at you, more so if you’re different or unique.
I can still remember her Queen of the Voice singing: “Are you going to cry at each scrape and fall? No, you get up and put yourself back together. You go to a corner and cry for five good minutes. And then you take a spatula, scrape yourself off the floor and superglue yourself together. It’s a Do-It-Yourself project.”
Her second unforgettable advice is one I practice to this day in all that I do from relationships, writing to business. “If you achieved a byline today, that’s yesterday’s story lining tonight’s dustbin. Tomorrow is brand new day. What have you got for me tomorrow?”
Be part of the solution, don’t redefine a problem. The world owes you nothing and everyday when you wake up, the meter is set to zero. As my blessed editor used to say, “As a morning prayer, get your head out of your ass and bring me a good story.”
Since we’re on the subject, each time you feel like an idiot or a failure at something remember there is a bigger imbecile on the planet who wished his head was out of his ass at a loss of $44 billion. Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic (October 31st, 2022):
“Elon Musk finally bought Twitter — or, as it turned out, was essentially forced to buy Twitter after shooting his mouth off about how keen he was to own it. He is now learning that contracts matter, and that this whole fandango was probably a stupid idea; his first three days at the helm have not, shall we say, inspired a lot of confidence in his managerial acumen. I suspect that Musk, as Spock said in a classic Star Trek episode, is about to find out that “having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”
Currently the biggest jack ass the media has had the pleasure to report, Musk is feeling the gravitas of being unlikeable, disrespected and the butt of his own jokes. Brilliant that he thought he is, he fell to his own media doing and will finally understand the meaning of “It’s lonely being at top”. Perhaps he has been feeling that way for some time, hence his erratic, childish and reckless behavior. Who knows and who cares. Maybe his mum and Grimes.
Meanwhile agreeing with Nichols’ logic and sentiments, I will remain on Twitter. It isn’t to support Musk. Again, it is strategy as Nichols describes:
“When the world’s richest man (and the Saudis, among others), own a huge slice of the public space, it matters. It would matter even if Musk did not have the Twitter persona, as he unfortunately does, of a shitposting teenager. Musk, if he is to be believed, plans to loosen the restrictions on Twitter — again, as is his right — to allow more disinformation. Yesterday, he even tweeted (then deleted) links to a discredited conspiracy theory about the Paul Pelosi assault. He may allow Trump back on the platform.
But all of that makes it imperative to stay, not go. Disinformation and trolling works best when the malefactors who engage in it create an impression of being a reliable and trustworthy majority, when they can say that “everybody knows this.” Abandoning such places out of some misplaced sense of moral rectitude simply clears the field for more lies and mischief. The trolls delighting in Musk’s purchase are a very small fraction of the world — and we should not encourage the delusion that there are more of them than there are normal and decent human beings.”
All the best to Musk. Meanwhile, across his sink at the Twitter office, I am doing a running man with a mock laugh and a middle finger.
