Marketing

I am in Eindhoven. It is seven in the evening, a Saturday.

There is a record playing. Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The cat is comfortable. I’m just done writing a story. Or I’m at an impasse in the story, and decided to stop for a blog post.

There is this old Zen master Suzuki who said achieving the comfort levels of a cat is as close as one may get to achieving total inner peace. I’m paraphrasing, but I agree.

I’m close to being that comfortable. There’s a cheeseburger on the way. I’m happily married. I’ve got a steady job at a cycling components manufacturer. Marketing.

The words I work in marketing slip easier from the tongue each time I say it.

This week someone asked me what I did for work and I said I worked in marketing. I thought of Bill Hicks, who famously commanded all people who worked in marketing to kill themselves.

When I said this, I was in a restaurant, and the waiter, a homeless looking fellow with a PSV (local football club) T-shirt happened to catch this while pouring our wine and said “you look like someone who works in marketing.”

Besides some quick journaling in the morning, I hadn’t written anything in three weeks. No little poem or story. And now I looked like someone in marketing. The conversation continued. I drank more that dinner than I should have.

What was it exactly? I wanted to ask him. The sneakers? The black, slightly tight slacks? The formal-ish brown dress shirt tucked into those pants? The facial hair? The attitude?

I thoroughly enjoy my job. I get to write about cycling all day.

But shit. Was I losing my cool?

It was a fire in my heart, that moment. Hopefully as close as I’ll ever get to a crisis of identity. Marketing may be what I do. But it’s not the job I should dress for, I thought.

Then I opened my MacBook Air and wrote a blog about it. Because that’s what I am.

A millennial.