Craft-Focused

So much of what's happening now is why I've never put much stock in society, and I don't say that as a curmudgeon, but as someone who values my friends and family as primary voices and forces. I also let go of a lot of what I wanted to believe or had believed about America, the citizen experience, after living through the flood of August 29, 2005 in New Orleans (well, I was in Mississippi for the actual storm, but that's a whole other story). 

I've been fortunate to work with intelligent, balanced, craft-focused fellow Americans for most of my career, though I'll be honest here in public and share that the last few years have been grueling for me job-wise. I've witnessed bullying, I've experienced bullying, I've been sabotaged out of a job, and I've intervened when possible to improve these situations. Nevertheless, my years upon years of collaborating and working with healthy, down-to-earth, production-oriented colleagues remained my guide, a reality check that when people are determined to play out non-work issues via their work environments, there is very little you can do to solve that as an individual, especially as one with no interest in hierarchy or competition. 

I'm glad other like-minded people reached out to me at these jobs, and vice versa. I'm proud that we were able to carve out spaces, even within unhealthy environments, to improve actual production processes or help people feel more comfortable, not only with writing or editing, but with the knowledge that they had support. 

As I've talked more and more with friends and colleagues of all professions, I've come to see how commonplace bullying can be, driven by dysfunctional people or dysfunctional ideas about work that emanate from authoritarianism, versus productivity or best practice, such as micromanagement or the unstated but pervasive belief that your employer ought to have control over what you say or do outside of work, which is not something I've ever believed, or signed up for.