🔫🔫🔫 It’s my birthday so I’m shooting my shot in re: finding new work.

🤖🤖🤖 new macroblog post (about artificial intelligence and sociopaths no less): outputs

LinkedIn is one of the most disingenuous and fake places on whole internet and I hope that never changes — because as a cultural artifact, the site is endlessly fascinating. Every time I spend more than 10 minutes there I feel like I’m auditing a grad school semiotics class.

To paraphrase a LinkedIn post I wrote, it’s tough to be a creative taking part in the group therapy session on LinkedIn. It’s lame that they think AI + whatever else negates the need human creatives, bc contemporary professional life needs it’s humanity and creativity more than ever.

Today was a mixed bag. On one hand, I lost my job. On the other, the Celtics choked at home again. 🏀

It’s a huge bummer when the comment section below a good LinkedIn post starts with a “buy my service/product/course” comment by the OP. I get why they (have to) do it, but I hate how much professional life is just selling oneself + steering every conversation towards a consumer acquisition beartrap.

I don’t work in advertising anymore, but I still pull this out from time to time because David Ogilvy was a G.

I’ve been working on a LinkedIn post for the last half hour but all I really want to write is “your aDaPt Or DiE posts are lame af and I hope someone drops a piano on you.”

Currently doing a massive rewrite on something I was pleased with last Friday. TL;DR I see the holes and weaknesses now. Frustrated, but undaunted. On y va!

Last week I wrote:

“A lot of the time, the hardest part of writing is finding a way in.”

I only just realized I hadn’t been looking for the way in on a new task — I’d been dancing around the edges. In essence, I’d been trying to renovate a house without making a mess. The mess is necessary.

I’ve been a bit flighty and distant of late. The combo of a new job (a p/t contract, but still), an old injury (x2), and the general state of the world has numbed me tf out. I need to do better, but I know I’m not the only one in the stuck/numb place. Maybe what I really need is to slow down. 🤔

Having a lot of autonomy at a job is exhilarating and kind of terrifying.

A lot of the time, the hardest part of writing is finding a way in. That first idea, that first line, the first words you know you won’t end up deleting…

The first few days in a new organization (work, team, group, whatever) are really nerve-wracking, huh.

My fave part of LinkedIn is when some influencer “realizes” something everyone knows and then posts about it like they’re Moses coming down the mountain with the tablets of the covenant.

I’ve been a professional writer for 20 years. My CV bursts with high-profile experiences and/or accomplishments in journalism, marketing, advertising, education, and UX. About 50 people have recommended me on LinkedIn. I have worked for two of the last 15 months. Life costs more than $0. Help.

As someone who has been (mildly) chastised for not being serious enough on LinkedIn, I’m endlessly amused by how many LinkedInners are happy to post wildly sexist and racist things next to their names, headshots, and employers.

I’m at the point of applying for stuff and getting rejected before even getting to the interview stage where I’m like, “Do I just suck now? Were the last 20 years some kind of weird fluke? Were people paying me a bunch of money for no reason?”

Reading LinkedIn posts on main = flipping channels from one infomercial to the next.

The “I haven’t found steady work in years and it’s breaking me” LinkedIn posts written by experienced, talented, award-winning people who have been consigned to the scrap heap are breaking me — an experienced, talented, award-winning person who (feels like he) has been consigned to the scrap heap.

I’m currently writing a Linkedin “article” about a piece I wrote on Medium in 2013. The gist: nothing much has changed but, also, almost everything has changed. I’m really just trying to impress someone who can hire me, because looking for work these days means constantly auditioning. It’s lame.

Another consequence of Luka Doncic getting traded is that the most annoying people on LinkedIn are now going to write 1,000 tHoUgHt LeAdErShiP posts about how no employee is irreplaceable.

If you’re cool with letting AI replace writers in your organization, you can’t complain when AI replaces you. Solidarity in the workplace and class solidarity need to be more obviously entwined.

Currently reading: Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro 📚 (which was published in 2019, by the way)

In one of my group chats we’re discussing how our youngest (26) member and his cohort didn’t really get to be weird, messy, underemployed/broke 20-something dirtbags having wild mis/adventures in the big city while figuring out who they were.

Q: Was that a thing for you? Did you do this?

Everything feted as original in advertising has been done before and that’s okay. Ads don’t need to reinvent the game to be good or effective. There are only a handful of story archetypes and yet we still watch and read. Knowing the tropes of dystopian sci-fi doesn’t make me not want to watch Silo.

My LinkedIn feed has become one long Boardy ad.

I joined micro.blog in December and this week I started posting a lot, like I did back in the day (real heads know). And the more I posted, the more I wanted to post. This felt odd; I retired from posting when social got really awful. Today, the penny dropped. I want to actually write again.

Somehow, losing Bob Uecker and David Lynch on the same day makes thematic sense. Both were true originals who coloured outside the lines and not only were they not punished for it, they were celebrated. There’s a lesson there, but I’m not sure it is applicable to our terrifying present.

Just found out I didn’t get a job I applied to after receiving an internal referral. I didn’t even get an interview — and I have 20 years of experience. It’s rough out there. If you’re in the same boat, my heart goes out to you. Keep your head up, keep hydrated, and keep going.