i have a confession. i told you all that i hate my job. that i don’t like my boss because he is always getting on my case. but the truth is, i dint actually hate my job—i just didn’t want to do it. and my boss wasn’t just being a dick to me for no reason. he was frustrated with me because my performance reflected my attitude. i was wrong to blame my boss for my own bad attitude. it sucks to say that but it’s the truth.
about a month or so ago, i hit an inflection point at work, where i realized how interesting my job can be, and how goddamn good at it i am when i really apply myself. to put it bluntly, the shit people are reading in the wall street journal and bloomberg is informed by the people i talk to all day when i’m actually getting on the phone and calling people. and they’re telling me the same things they tell them and more because i know the right questions to ask, and i’m a nice guy about it so they like talking to me. i don’t always beat them to publication, but i almost always put together more fulsome and accurate stories than they do with the help of my team. my job is basically the special forces of journalism. a small elite unit of highly trained and competent, mission-driven people. i’ve been a fool to squander that opportunity and i need to admit that transparently.
just to give a sense of the magnitude of how elite our team is, here are some recruitment numbers for february 2019, which are largely in line with the historical monthly average:
Applicants: 1,265
Phone Interviews: 546
On-Site Interviews: 117
Case Studies: 54
Final Interviews: 31
Offers Extended: 8
Offers Accepted: 5
Offers Rejected: 2
Offers Pending: 1
what that means is that my job has a 0.006324110671937 acceptance rate, and it’s a job i was recruited for. i need to appreciate that and honor it.
today my boss sat down with me for the first time in quite some time and told me that he’s really noticed how much i’ve improved, that i’m doing a really good job, and that he knows he was hard on me but it was never personal, and he’s glad that he hasn’t had to be hard on me recently. it was a very real moment, and one that i appreciate at my core. he was truly human, vulnerable, and humble. and i could tell he expected me to have something to get off my chest. but i didn’t. because when i started pulling my weight, he stopped riding me, and i told him that i noticed and appreciated that. at the end, we talked about grabbing a beer and shook hands awkwardly, had a laugh and everything. it felt good to get that conversation out of the way.
i could have taken the opportunity to air my grievances and to talk about how he wasn’t fair to me, that i felt bullied. but it’s not longer true. he came to the table willing to admit his personal failings, and i appreciated that enough to be vulnerable about my own.
while i am taking the trip i’m taking this summer whether my job will let me keep my job or not, i can now say that my work on journalism has finally helped me to evolve to my next level. the last vestiges of immaturity and self-consciouness have been stripped away. i no longer feel like my boss is forcing me to do things i don’t want to do, but instead i feel compelled to fulfill my responsibilities as an internal matter. instead of dreading my day at the office and daydreaming about some other life, i recognize the privilege that being in my position represents.
no longer will i trudge my way to the office. instead i will own it. i will not be motivated only by my wages. i will appreciate what i have until such time as i cast it aside not because i am not a good fit for it, but because it is not a good fit for me.
i proclaim death to the office slave, birth to my own self mastery.