MY FICKLE LIFE

I didn’t post yesterday because I had a big decision to make, and frankly I needed to spend all my energies drinking and fretting about it. I could have posted, but it would have read like incomprehensible blather … kind of like George W. Bush giving a speech.

I was offered a job at my old newspaper with a lot more responsibility and money. It has been a whoppin’ four and a half months since I left journalism and became a corporate hack. I made the decision because after 15 years of deadlines, long hours, and shitty pay, I wanted to see how the other half lived.

Leaving journalism was like breaking up from a long-term relationship. I loved journalism … it was a part of me. But after 15 years, I had grown bored with it. I had gotten in a rut. The things that I once loved about it now annoyed me. The way it snored, once so cute, now was just obnoxious. The way it would belch after a good meal, once mildly amusing, had escalated into causing me to go into a conniption of rage.

I had a seven year itch, eight years late.

So I left. I packed up my AP stylebook and hit the road. So long journalism. Have a nice life. I have a new boyfriend now … and he’s much more polished and sophisticated.

The corporate world opened my eyes in a lot of ways. I rode in a company jet, hob knobbed with the CEO, strategized how to grow a communications department which started when they hired me. After working at newspapers, where you had to beg for money to buy a new pen and deal with people constantly pissed off at you, it was refreshing to be handed a brand new $5,000 laptop and not have your phone ring off the hook with crazies and complainers.

But I felt out of place in this world. For one, I had to endure cheering company platitudes every Friday while wearing the company color. For someone who came from a world that was often jaded, this shiny behavior was a little spooky. I suspected that someone had slipped happy pills in the water cooler, or that extra oxygen was being pumped in through the air vents.

Everything also had to be “positioned” and “strategized” and given a “positive spin.” In journalism it was pretty straight forward. You got the facts and presented them. You didn’t have to put happy faces after every sentence because … well, life isn’t full of happy faces. I was starting to get rather pissy at all the fucking happy faces, actually.

So I started “Cookiebitch.” I needed a place to vent, to be myself again. Soon, “Cookiebitch” was my favorite thing about my day. I could write dozens of marketing fliers, press releases and employee memos and not feel like I had done anything of VALUE. But I’d post once to “Cookiebitch” and be all giddy. I was cheating on my shiny new boyfriend with the rebel next door. And it felt so GOOD.

Yet I still didn’t let myself quite process the fact that maybe I had made a mistake… that maybe I didn’t belong here in corporate land. It was a lot less stressful here, and I got to go home at 5 every day. My bosses loved me and promised to move me up the corporate ladder. I was upwardly mobile, baby! I had visions of a corner office, of a six figure salary and my own parking space some day.

Then journalism, that old beau of mine, came knocking on my door again. And when I saw it, all rough and rugged and full of flaws, my heart went pitter pat. That freaked me out, quite frankly. Did I want to go back to that old life … the old problems? Could I handle the snoring and the burping again?

It was a tough decision … the hardest I’ve ever made. But I learned a lot about myself along the way. The first is that I can be part of the corporate world, but it will never really be part of me. I can try to embrace it, I can wear blue on Fridays and fake a cheer with a fake smile on my face. But that will never be who I am. Even a corner office and a parking space won’t make it who I am.

And that’s okay. Because I think the burping and the snoring is a lot more fun. It’s not perfect, it sometimes makes me want to throw things … but it is a hell of a ride.

I took the job, needless to say. I’m going back to journalism. It’s where I belong.