What the @$##$%^. So I get a poke from my buddy in PR, Daniel Kile, that my blog gots me a mention in the Financial Times. The FT! Now, blogger friends, believe me when I say WiP cherishes every nod from the likes of RiceDaddies and LaDawn and Poop and Boogies. But the FT! The Wall Street Journal of Europe! The business bible of world leaders! Come on!
And not just anywhere in the FT. Lucy Kellaway, my fave columnist, dropped my name in a piece about New Year resolutions. I like her because she’s sassy and funny and a splash of working-broad color in an otherwise fairly grey (okay, it’s salmon pink) paper. She might be my favorite workplace writer after Lisa Belkin of The New York Times.
And then I read it.
It’s titled, “A New Year’s resolution that will last,” and starts out entertainingly (classic Kellaway!):
I may not be getting better at much else, but I am getting better at making New Year’s resolutions. Mine for 2008 is the best I’ve ever made. It’s positive, it’s ambitious, it’s inspiring but it also has a highish chance of success. It is to be competent.
Funny! And one I totally get. I too strive to be competent, or at least fake it fairly well. Past resolutions, she continues, usually ended in something less than success:
In the old days I used to make the classic mistake of resolving to stop doing things that I knew were bad. Drinking, shouting at the children, playing Freecell.
These resolutions failed within hours. If you do bad things knowing they are bad, there must be something pretty powerful compelling you to do so. In my case, there is the pleasing sensation of alcohol, the annoyingness of children and the imperative to improve one’s Freecell average score. So simply to state one dark day in midwinter (a time when bad habits are needed to keep morale up) that you are quitting is to set yourself up for certain, instant and ignominious failure.
She considers her options for 2008:
So for 2008 I have resolved to give myself the third degree before making any resolutions. On New Year’s Eve I spotted in the newsagent my own picture on the masthead of the Financial Times nestling against a picture of Nigella Lawson, my former university acquaintance, on the front of the Guardian. Suddenly I knew what I wanted: to be less frumpy in 2008. Over Christmas I read a book on glamour for ageing women so knew how to do it and was quite excited at the prospect. But then I asked: can I really be bothered, day in and day out, to make so much effort with brushes and blow driers to achieve an uncertain end result?
OMG, I so get that! I too have a passing interest in looking presentable at the office. But what I lack is commitment. You know those girls you see tottering to work in pointy-toed heels and careful makeup? That’s commitment. I just can’t commit to fashion with enough dedication to give up my dowdy but warm coat and my six-year-old Kenneth Cole sh*tkickers. I care about looking good at work. I just don’t care enough. These days, I can’t even be bothered with lipstick. And you know it’s all downhill from here.
So back to Kellaway’s column. She finally decides on six resolutions, and here’s where I come in. She’s referring to a post from a few days ago about resolutions I’d made for 2008. It’s mentioned in her resolution #3:
Produce work I’m proud of. This is the resolution of Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, who writes a blog for Time magazine. It sounds OK, but if you look closer it makes no sense. If you weren’t producing work you were proud of before, there were probably reasons for that. Perhaps you were too sloppy. Why should that suddenly change?
What the @#$fl%$%? Here’s what I read: a) I make no sense; b) there are probably good reasons I struggle to produce work I’m proud of, in that I probably stink at what I do; c) I’m sloppy; d) I can’t change.
What the @#!$%%$?
I shot off an e-mail to Kellaway. I don’t know her, but her e-mail’s right on the FT web site. I was all, like, Hey, man, I suck at a lot of things, but I’m not sloppy. That’s the thing that stuck in my craw; calling a reporter sloppy is like calling a lion tamer a coward. Of course I slip up sometimes. But if I were characterized continuously as sloppy, I don’t think I’d have a job.
She responded right away with a sweet and funny note saying I’d got it all wrong; she didn’t mean to imply that I was sloppy. Rather, she’d meant that sloppiness in general might impede one’s production of good work, and if so that might be a hard quality to change.
Huh. I don’t know; I didn’t read it that way. What do you think? But regardless, I think maybe I need to add a resolution. In 2008, I will try to be less touchy about what others say or write to and about me. Go ahead; insult my ugly shoes. I’ll just smile. And take your name down for serious butt-kicking in 2009.