2 years ago, I took a big risk. I left a job I’d only started 6 months before, because a friend was willing to take a bit of a chance on me, and hire me to work with him to build the digital team at an agency best known for print, direct mail, and in-store work.
Needless to say, it paid off. The last 2 years have been an amazing learning experience, and I’ll spend the rest of my life being grateful to the team at OSL for what we accomplished together, and how I’ve grown with the influence, help, and support of so many individuals there.
But the times, they are a-changing.
On Monday, I’ll be joining the strategy team at Klick, and starting in an industry that’s new to be as well, working primarily in the health space.
It’s not just new challenges and new opportunities that motivated me to make the switch. I’m excited to work with the people, and the culture that I’ve been introduced to in interviews and conversations with the Klick team.
So, starting on Monday, I’ll be working downtown again. Which I’m hoping means I’m going to be a little more available than I’ve been in the past couple years, given the lack of commute.
I’m really, very, incredibly (possibly unreasonably) excited. Change is the one constant in life, and this feels like a very good one.
New job, new challenges, same Jon Crowley. Very excited to do this.
I’m a half-white, university educated, articulate, white collar professional who grew up in the suburbs.
For a minority (myself, my sisters, and my mother’s side of the family are of Jamaican descent), I am quite literally as assimilated as I could possibly be, while still being ethnically distinguishable from what we used to call ‘the majority’.
And I can say, with this background, that total assimilation is a myth.
While there is probably some credence to the argument that minority groups also segregate themselves, there is a good reason for that - at core, this society is not built for us.
I’m long since begrudging anyone for this fact. It doesn’t really bother me. It only comes up as an irritation when I’m told this isn’t the case. That the thing that keeps minority groups from fully integrating into society is a lack of effort, a lack of desire.
I’m not talking about racism, institutional or otherwise. I’m talking about a passive reality - the structures of this society, the culture, was built for a specific subset of humanity. I am profoundly lucky to fit well enough into that mold to gain many, maybe even most of the benefits that design entails. I still sit far enough out of the intended parameters that I see friction now and again, and I notice it.
I’m only mentioning this because, at core, it’s not really possible for people who fit very well into this framework to notice how rough the edges are. It’s like walking through a tunnel in the dark - if you never touch the sides, it is an experience without friction, even without the idea of friction. But if you’re too tall, or too wide for the tunnel, or even just too disoriented, you’ll feel, again and again, the scrapes of walls that others will never truly believe exist.
As much as I’m writing this so people who fit well into society recognize that not fitting in isn’t always a choice, I’m also writing it so those who do not assimilate completely realize it’s not fair to blame someone for not understanding something they can live decades without ever encountering. Experience is the entry cost of true understanding. Don’t begrudge those who haven’t yet received it.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m realizing just how much of a problem not having any hobbies is.
Put more bluntly, my life was a cycle of working very hard, then blowing off steam, for about two years.
Work would be time spent at the office, or writing and research and networking done in the pursuit of getting better at what I do. Blowing off steam was essentially drinking with friends, drinking at networking events, and from time to time, drinking by myself.
Because these two elements were 95% of my waking hours, I essentially needed to anchor my value to my progress and growth in the realm of “work”.
Recently (as in, the last few months) I’ve noticed that I need, at minimum, a third category: recharge / relaxation. This staved off burnout, but didn’t give me anything to take pride in.
You can’t tie a sense of self-worth to your ability to read while sitting in a beanbag chair.
The core problem is this: my belief in my own value is far too wrapped up in my professional progress. As such, if I feel I’m not making enough progress (totally independent from quality of work, or value created by my work), I begin to feel off-balance.
I’ve done this in the past with relationships, so it’s not a completely isolated behaviour.
The problem is, I don’t really work at anything that isn’t my job. I don’t have an external source of validation. I’ve managed to build a life that doesn’t have any outlet for my desire to do meaningful work, outside of my job.
Problematically, identifying an issue does nothing to address it. But it does shut up at least one of the threads of inquiry that has been running through my head late at night.
A little less than a year ago, I went through something difficult, and in the end I’m convinced it made me a better person. There was a period where it could have gone either way, but without going into it again, I had to decide whether to shut down my emotions (which were already held pretty close) or learn to embrace, and move past them.
If you’d asked me, or anyone else, which I would have picked at that time, the safe bet would have been the former. But, after a short period of denial, I decided I needed to accept and embrace what I was feeling, and actually deal with it, regardless of the potential pain in the process.
The unintended side-effect of this, is that I never really went back to how I was beforehand. I’ve been a much more emotionally open, emotionally vulnerable person of the past year. And as much as this has been one of my biggest fears for most of my adult(ish) life, it’s undoubtedly been one of the best years of my life. 25 was good to me.
From accepting my own emotions, I became much more comfortable sharing myself with people. What I thought, how I felt, where I was coming from. I was also more willing to be embarrassed, more willing to have a risk go wrong. When you’re not worried about controlling your reaction to things, maintaining a logical lead on your emotions, it’s a hell of a lot easier to connect with people on a personal level. The largest part of this shift was getting introduced to a great group of people, but I won’t pretend that the person I was even two years ago would have been able to fit in as well.
Being able to share more and expose more of myself in the moment, made it easier to keep what parts of myself and my life I consider private to myself, without withdrawing.
I didn’t realize any of this at the time. It was only a few months ago, when I wondered why another, unrelated situation was affecting me deeply, that I clued in. I never really put the walls all the way back up. A few experiences indicate I can remember how well enough, but it appears my default is vulnerability, and shutting down my emotional side is something I have to consciously do.
Not very long ago, this would have terrified me. But I’ve learned that the power in vulnerability isn’t just the opportunity for connection, but also the opportunity to rebuild. Being hurt, being torn down, is a chance to rebuild, to improve.
Walls preserve, and by doing so protect you from any impetus to evolve.
My entire life, as far as I can remember, people have referred to me as a sensitive boy. Usually it’s been a positive, like the 4th grade teacher who, when speaking to my parents, intimated that my sensitivity would endear me to women later in my life. People who know me well, likely find this comical.
I’ve always been somewhat sensitive, I suppose, but I’ve never thought of it that way. I’ve felt vulnerable, or weak, or too easily shaped by my world. Those were the overwhelming feelings of my youth, and probably contributed heavily to my not-so-slow, self-reinvention as something of an asshole.
When you were the sensitive boy, the kid who could be teased until he cried, it’s easy to idolize the bastard, the villain. I still catch myself doing it, letting my internalised definition of cartoonish evil determine my response to things. The villain isn’t ruled by his emotions. The sensitive boy is.
Earlier today, I asked if my family could avoid the same conversation we’ve been having for weeks, an internal family argument that has nothing to do with me other than an assumption that I have some insight into the mind of the male in his late teens. The response, somewhat unexpected, was my mother saying that she’d forgotten “I was so sensitive.” I don’t, I didn’t, really have a response.
What people don’t generally understand is that empathy, sensitivity, is why I’m half-decent at being the bad guy. Being able to feel the barbs and comments of others, inherently, makes it simple for me to see what is affecting someone else. And since I’ve learned, in my relatively few years, to put up reasonably effective walls around myself, I can (at last) absorb more abuse than I can dish out. I’m aware it’s sad that I take pride in this, but I do nonetheless.
The hard part is in trusting people, in feeling something genuine, in building lasting relationships. Because such things can’t happen through walls, and you need to exist in a bare, genuine state.
And when I do that, I’m still the same sensitive boy. And I don’t feel like I’m supposed to be.
My mother is black (moved to Canada from Jamaica at age 8), and my father is white (3rd generation Irish (there is some question here due to adoption, but the name/family is) immigrant.) I’m mentioning this because they, having raised 3 mixed race children (I prefer this to the term biracial) have given an absurd amount of thought to what it means to be mixed in today’s society. To the point where, before having children, they had extended discussions about how they would approach race in our lives. They’ve done a pretty fantastic job, although I’m biased.
In conversation a few days ago, it became clear that there were things they hadn’t considered, because these experiences are specifically shaped by being of mixed race.
The big one is, I am far more comfortable discussing race than the majority of people I know. I often forget that pointing out that someone has different experiences in our society due to the preconceptions that come with authority figures looking at them, is a controversial statement for some people. I’m not trying to reduce anyone to their race (in fact, the exact opposite) but I also have no qualms about looking at that as part of the lens through which they view society. This is because I had to become comfortable with discussing race to be comfortable with myself. Being mixed is far less uncommon than it once was, but sometimes I still feel like people look at me with an unanswered question. I’m at least partially projecting, but I also don’t take it personally.
Many people seem to define progress on race issues by how long we can go before they come up. This is a reason I make some people uncomfortable. I define progress as the point where race can come up at any time and no one freaks out, or makes an irrational judgement, or assumes that by bringing up race, I’m getting angry, or attacking someone.
I couldn’t get a fake ID in high school. There is probably not a high school within the limits of the town I grew up in where I could have gotten a fake ID. There just aren’t enough people who look like me, especially when you consider that Driver’s Licenses were in full colour when I was in my late teens. This isn’t a big deal by any means, but it’s the kind of thing that drives home being ‘different’ in a way that is difficult to discuss, again, without making anyone uncomfortable.
I don’t like halloween. Not because of the themes (which I kinda enjoy), but because, and it took me a while to realise this, I was uncomfortable with costumes from a young age, because many non-generic ones (the kind that kids and teens like) are based on emulating a celebrity, or character from a work of fiction. It may seem insane that not looking like any of these people would discourage me, but I’d suggest you take into account the standard insecurity of youth, and the number of times in an average year (even now) when I will be told that I’m not black. (No one ever tells me that I’m not white, but they will tell me that I’m ‘too white’. These things are never said in anger, or to hurt my feelings. Mostly, comments like these come from friends and acquaintances who don’t see an issue.) It’s a discomfort that started with specifically not wanting to have an awkward conversation when I was at my most awkward, and it sticks with me today, despite knowing better.
At this point in my life, I’m very, very comfortable with who I am. I think of myself as mixed, and as black, partially because my entire extended family is black, and partially because it’s a large part of my history and life experience. I probably need to learn to be less openly comfortable discussing race, because most people aren’t.
I still define progress on issues of race as being able to discuss them openly, without the assumption that noticing is somehow racist. If I wanted to start an argument, I’d compare the majority North American attitude toward race as a combination of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes” and the US Military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy.
But I’m tired of starting arguments.
This isn’t a New Year’s Resolutions post. It’s a post about a fundamental mistake that I’ve made, and that some other people will make in the coming year.
You can’t fix yourself. You have to rebuild.
Unless you’re supremely lucky, you’ve probably gone through something in life that broke you. Not permanently, maybe not even visibly, but there has been one, or many experiences that have left you in a state that isn’t quite what you, or those close to you, would call pristine. This is okay. It’s awful, but it’s fine, because it indicates you’ve lived, rather than existing. The risk of being broken is the price of life.
But when we’re broken, we inevitably try to ‘fix’ things. Which leads to problems. If something terrible happens, if your foundation is cracked, you can spend all of your time trying to patch it. You look at the missing elements, the parts of you that are changed, or damaged, and you try to fix it. You try to turn back into the person you were before things changed, before they got difficult.
You can’t. And all the time you spend trying to turn yourself back into a past version of yourself will make you sadder, and colder, and farther from where you want to be. Humans are complex systems, and the intricacies of our lives aren’t like a car - you can’t swap in seemingly identical parts and expect things to keep running. Wanting to be fixed is a form of denial. It’s about wanting to feel, and seem, like you’ve never been broken.
Rebuild. Take stock of who you are, where you are, and what has changed about your life and yourself. And then do the things that will make you happier, make you smarter and better and stronger, and do them because you want to. No one who is trying to fix a loss, or a heartache, is going to move on - if you do this, you are defining yourself by your tragedy.
Rebuild. It’s slower, and harder, and scarier because you never really have a clear blueprint until it’s over. But it’s worth it. Because you’ll be a happier, truer version of yourself on the other side.
We’re starting a new year. Don’t make decisions that are based on trying to patch some aspect of your life, you won’t stick with them, and they won’t make you happy. If you’re unhappy, or lost, or unsure, there’s not one thing that will suddenly make everything better again. You don’t need to be fixed. You need to rebuild.
