on The Critics: Fuck 'Em All

This post was originally written in July 2013 after I was canned from a very lucrative agency gig. With no job prospects on the horizon and dealing with extreme burnout, I figured I’d go all-in on this writing thing.

After getting fired from my job, I find myself with a lot of downtime these days. Until just recently, I worked at an experiential marketing agency. Joining the events industry was very much a lifestyle choice. You don’t get into this if you enjoy things like “free time” or “weekends.” The only thing you balance with work is sleep. But, hey, no complaints over here. Loved every minute of it.

Letting go wasn’t easy. A lot of thoughts ran through my head. Job is gone . . . money I’ve set aside will be gone soon enough at this rate. I’m completely burned out. After three years of living the dream, I am left withered and frail after so much time in the game. So, yeah, I think I’ve earned some TV time on this sunny Tuesday afternoon.

Flipping through the channels, I settle on Dr. Phil, who I’ve never paid much attention to. Just kind of always assumed he was a pragmatic, sensible guy. And if I need one thing right now, it’s a little perspective.

Jeez, Dr. Phil is a downer!

Alright, I can’t let this guy suck the life force out of me. There’s a whole world out there to be seen and there are lives being lived. But he just kills me, this Dr. Phil. Today he’s got these awesome fifteen-year-old kids on his show — these young people with hearts and heads still so brand-new and open to what’s ahead of them — and he’s doing his whole tough-love thing about how they need to have backup plans for their dreams, how they have to perform academically or they can forget about playing music or sports. And it’s all hyped up for TV, of course, and these sweet kids are under lights with Doctor First Name getting them all worked up for good TV and it’s just heartbreaking to watch.

 I see the tears welling up in this one teenager’s eyes on screen. I’m sure some producer in the studio is really excited about this fact, and probably hoping for the cry that he thinks means good TV. At least we’re lucky Dr. Phil didn’t have a show when Jobs and Wozniak were distracted from their homework and academic performance by dreams. Plus, the Doc has a gut, and he wrote a diet book! Hello? If anything he should be honest and tell these kids, “Hey, I’ve got a forty-something-inch waist and a best-selling diet book, so obviously anything’s possible. Just stay focused and out of trouble. You’ll be fine, it’s just a weird time any way you cut it, being fifteen.”

Makes me wonder what it would have been like if Dr. Phil had met with a young Albert Einstein. Can you imagine?

EINSTEIN: I plan to dream the impossible and put it into effect.

DR. PHIL: I'll tell you what, you better wake up and smell the coffee, okay? Because I'll tell you something right now: all the hoopla pipe-dream load of horse-malarkey will not fly in the real world. Listen to me for a minute instead of talking about "Oh, the 20th century has been handed to us so casually and it's staggering to believe that we have sketched it out with pencils on napkins... okay? Pick that pencil up and start working on your SAT scores, young man." 

Our twentieth century would've been fucked right then and there.

I decide in that moment to go all-in on this writing thing.

Looking back at this 10 years later, it’s pretty clear that Dr. Phil was wrong the entire time. So what if I ended up taking a job in retail out of desperation a month later. And so what that I worked there for six more. Eventually I figured out and the rest is history. Tim Dillon backs me up.