by Mia Mercado
My career as a greeting card editor started with the more serious, sentimental cards for holidays like Christmas and Mother’s Day. I’d spend the hours between nine and five rewriting cards to say “I’m so grateful for you, Grandma” or “Being your husband means so much at the holidays and always” while listening to 50 Cent or murder podcasts. Later, I moved to the humor card team, where I’d hoped to eventually end up. This all sounds like a deleted scene from 500 Days of Summer (probably the scene that had all the characters of color with dimension and backstories), but it was my honest-to-God life for about five years.
Like most nine-to-five, extremely corporate jobs, my day-to-day had boring parts and not fun parts and soul-suckingly frustrating parts. Those parts eventually became more frequent and weighed more heavily than the silly, dreamy, fart joke parts. I’d spent five years at a billion-dollar corporation with a few thousand employees, the majority of whom were well-meaning, white Midwesterners. As one of the few young, female, only-half-white employees, I’d heard enough conversations about “figuring out how to utilize Facebook” and “figuring out how to utilize feminism but without getting political” and “figuring out how to utilize multiculturalism—or is it called ‘diversity’ or are we calling it ‘inclusivity’ now? I can’t keep up!!!” to last me the rest of forever.
I also wanted to start writing more. Both writing more frequently and writing more as in length. (Another insider tip: a “long” greeting card has maybe fifty words max, which is about how many words I prefer to use in exactly one sentence.) Plus, greeting card copy lives in this weird space: in terms of corporate writing, it is admittedly nice and beautiful. You get to spend your day figuring out how to put words to some of people’s most personal, special, and intimate moments. But also, you’re making money off of people’s most personal, special, and intimate moments. Depending on how I was feeling on any given day, I got to/had to live in this timeless, arguably cultureless vacuum, where it was forever a special occasion. I had to make a product that the corporation deemed relevant to what was going on in the world but in a “don’t mention any celebrities or specific brands” kind of way, and I couldn’t be too time-specific, and also IS ANYONE EVEN BUYING GREETING CARDS ANYMORE??? I am very chill when it comes to existential crises.
So, when I got a Tumblr message from a creative executive at a local ad agency asking if I was interested in leaving my current job boyfriend to work for a new, shiny job boyfriend, I very casually orgasmed at the idea of change of any kind. (That’s right, kids, Tumblr wasn’t always just a social media platform for moody text posts and easily accessible porn gifs. It was where adults did business.) To put it professionally, I was extremely horny for something new. I felt stagnant and bored and saw no attractive path forward as a greeting card editor. But ~*The Ad World*~ was different and new and, did I mention, different!
And so, I left. I quit my stable, well-paying job, where I felt appreciated but underutilized, comfortable but worried I had stopped growing. I put in my two weeks’ notice (which was actually a full month’s notice . . . this greeting card bridge had treated me well and thus no greeting card bridge burning took place) to start working at the aforementioned ad agency where I’d been lured by the promise of writing! Full-time! I would be a full-time writer! Yum, yum, I ate the promise up with a #sponsored spoon.
I didn’t know what quitting would be like, if not fiery and ferocious and filmed for a viral YouTube video. The actual act of quitting my greeting card job turned out to be very cordial and nice, and I definitely cried on multiple occasions but in a good way. I set up a meeting with my boss, and she was like, “Is this the meeting I think it is?” and I was like, “Yeah.” And she was like, “Damn. Okay.” The “meeting” was really just thirty minutes of us going back and forth saying how good of a boss/employee the other was. My boss was understanding and encouraging and remains my pinnacle of Good Managers/People. When I told my coworkers, they did that thing where they were like, “Happy for you but sucks for us,” which makes me want to sob just thinking about it.* Because this was a Big Corporation, I also had to meet with my boss’s boss and an HR person or two, but, thankfully, those meetings weren’t awful. There was a little bit of “maybe we can make this work” and them asking if there was anything they could do for me to stay. It was admittedly flattering (and what human person doesn’t love a little flattery), but I had already made my decision to leave (and also, I’d signed a contract with the ad agency).
Leaving felt scary and good and nerve-racking and right. When I drove out of the parking garage for the last time, I happy-sobbed while playing NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” with the windows down because I am, without a doubt, that bitch.
* * *
The previous summer, the summer of 2015, was another pivotal time for me. Over the course of a few months, I broke up with my boyfriend of almost four years, starting dating for the first time in almost four years, and met Riley, the person who is now my husband. What I’m saying is, when I fuck around, I don’t fuck around, and it always leads to a very serious, monogamous relationship. (“Always” meaning literally just the once.)
The decision to end that four-ish-year relationship—my first Real Adult Relationship, which had seen me through the end of college, moving across the country, and most of my first Real Adult Job—was an incredibly difficult one. He was the first person who I felt loved by in a real, romantic way. He was good to me and to my family (extra admirable given my parents’ extremely vocal, very Catholic disapproval at our decision to live together despite not being married). He was an overall good person. (We don’t still keep in touch, but from the updates I squeeze out of our mutual friends—because I am nosy and want to know all things always—he is still an overall good person who has found another very good person to be married to.)
There was nothing classically “wrong” with our relationship. No one cheated. No one was intentionally hurtful or harmful. No one cut their sandwiches the wrong way or had a deep affinity for Dane Cook. Still, I grew more and more unhappy. Why does no one tell you that’s how relationships can be: that nothing can be “wrong” but things can feel not “right”?
Oh, literally everyone says that? There are songs and novels and TV show subplots about it? It’s just that I don’t understand anything until it affects me in a deeply personal way? Gotcha.
In hindsight, I should have been more upfront about my unhappiness as it was growing. I shouldn’t have waited until one afternoon while his parents were in town from out of state—I should clarify that I know that I, in no way, come out of this looking like the “good guy”—to tell him that I hadn’t felt happy or satisfied by our relationship for a while, that our relationship felt more platonic than romantic, that I wanted to break up. He felt blindsided.
I didn’t know what breaking up with someone would be like. I had never broken up with someone before. Not to brag, but all three of my middle school relationships ended with me being dumped by the guy or the guy’s friend on AOL Instant Messenger. (Just thinking about the sound of someone signing off of AIM makes me break out in hormonal bacne.) In college, I had sort-of kind-of dated people in that way where you’re like, “You want to be my boyfriend?” and they’re like, “Let’s not put labels on this.” And you’re like, “Cool, cool, love that. So, you’ll just keep calling me when you’re drunk and falling asleep while touching my boobs?” And they’re like, “What did you say? I’m so drunk right now.” There is no breakup conversation associated with those kinds of pseudo-relationships. They just fizzle out or you get old enough to realize you can fall asleep while honking your boobs all by yourself.
Our breakup was not fiery or ferocious; it was mostly just sad. Really, really sad. I know “sad” is a trite way to describe a breakup, but in its simplest form, that’s how it felt. It’s sad to want to comfort someone who you’ve made sad in the first place. It’s sad to hear someone say, “Maybe we can make it work,” and not have that feel comforting. (Instead of it ea
sing a weight off my shoulders, it felt like a thousand Tim Gunns on my back.) I know this isn’t even a little bit relatable or comforting to someone who has been broken up with recently or perhaps ever. I know initiating the breakup is supposed to culturally void me of my right to sadness as per rom-com and pop ballad rules. That’s why the song is called “Someone Like You” and not “(I Left You for) Someone Like You (Only Better).” Still, it was hard and hollowed me out in a way I hadn’t felt before.
Leaving felt scary and nerve-racking but right. I don’t remember what I did the night he moved the last of his things out of our apartment.
* * *
The very first day at my Shiny, New Advertising Job was fun! And shiny! And new! The office had windows! I could work off-site! I was always within a ten-foot radius of a group of young people! We wore hats inside! This all seemed Disney World–level magical after working in an old, mostly windowless, corporately dressed office space for five years. I was wary of the advertising industry as a whole, but I remember telling people how excited I was to “work really hard!” I also remember telling myself that it wasn’t complete bullshit that I was excited to “work really hard!” (Reader, it was complete bullshit.)
While I had desperately wanted to work on something new and challenging, I quickly realized I didn’t want that new, challenging thing to be advertising. Specifically, ad copy for a candy bar. That was trying to appeal to Millennials™. Through, like, four-word Instagram captions. I learned this on about the second day of my rapidly dulling, still extremely new advertising job.
What’s that thing where you don’t realize you’re living in your personal hell until it’s suddenly 300,000 degrees and you’re sharing a workspace with Satan? Is there a German word for it? Writing social media ad copy for a candy bar was a brand of hell catered specifically to me. It is not, of course, everyone’s hell. There were and are plenty of people who would have pushed me into the fiery depths for the position I had and the salary I had negotiated. If nothing else, I learned from my ad job that you always, always ask for more than they offer. There is probably more money and you definitely deserve it. Also, successful negotiation makes you feel powerful and sensual, like how I imagine Helen Mirren feels constantly.
If you’ve ever wondered who decides which emojis go into the copy for those sponsored Instagram posts you scroll past on your news feed, the answer is . . . LIKE, TWELVE DIFFERENT PEOPLE. At one point, I had to make a case for why puns were “on trend.” My case was, “They aren’t! I just like them! I was told I was going to be writing humor copy, but oops, surprise! I’m somehow spending my time talking to my Lit Instagram Fam #CandySquad *insert tongue sticking out emoji and/or fire emoji depending on which one you team of forty-year-old men think is more millennial*!!!” I had barely finished the first week before I was trying to figure out how long I had to stay for it to not be personally and professionally embarrassing when I left.
I didn’t even last two months. My brief (but also somehow extremely long) eight-ish weeks devolved into working stupidly long hours on projects I cared stupidly little about. I was leaving early and coming home late. Seconds after stepping in the door at home, I would start furiously crying while shoving dinner into my mouth. I was spending most of my nights scream-sobbing to Riley about how much I hated what I was doing, and he was spending most of his nights asking me why I didn’t leave. Then I’d scream-sob about how I was worried it was too soon for me to decide I needed to quit, and the scream-sob cycle would start over again. I was drinking! During! THE WORKDAY! A thing I had never even considered doing before and have never done since, let alone done on more than one occasion. Once, while home for a quick lunch break, I decided to chase my meal (a handful of Goldfish crackers while trying not to cry) with a shot of whiskey. I remember thinking, in my delusional state, “This is fine! This is normal and fine!” If you couldn’t tell by the aforementioned workweek day-drinking and nightly scream-sobbing, it was not normal, and I was not fine.
I can’t pinpoint the one or two reasons why I hated the job as much as I did. It was, in part, because it felt like a regressive step in my career: I was writing less of what I wanted to, instead of more; I was working on projects that I was both bored by and that made me feel gross instead of projects that, while boring, made me feel neutral or even a little good. I didn’t feel valued. I didn’t feel needed. I felt like my New Job Boyfriend had courted me and the second I said “yes,” he was like, “LOL JK I am not a boyfriend but a stinky garbage dump! Ha ha, you just fucked a garbage dump!” To top this shit sundae with a rotten cherry: all of the intuitive wariness I’d had about entering advertising felt validated by the experience I was having. And so, after mustering up a stupid amount of courage, I decided I needed to quit.
Despite knowing I needed to quit, figuring out how to quit was way more difficult this time around. The conversation I repeatedly had with myself went like this:
“I need to quit.”
“But you’ve only been there for, like, six weeks.”
“Yeah, but it’s been, like, five weeks and six days of me feeling miserable.”
“But maybe it will get better?”
Both internal voices laugh in unison.
“But maybe you can last a year?”
“A YEAR?!?”
“But maybe you can last until the end of this year?”
“That’s six more months. I don’t even want to do six more days.”
“But what will everyone at your new job say? And the people at your old job? And your friends and family and strangers who hear about how you quit your job for another job, and you lasted less than two months at that new job before quitting? What if they all think you’re a failure and a quitter and bad at everything and you never get another job again?”
“I don’t care what they’ll say.”
Both internal voices laugh in unison.
“I’ll get through tomorrow and decide.”
After having that conversation in my head daily, I started having it aloud with Riley. Then I started talking to my sister about it. Then I shared parts of my internal conversation aloud with the couple of people who I felt comfortable with at the ad job. Turns out, I was not even a little bit alone in how I felt. One of my coworkers, who was also pretty new and also pretty unhappy, described the environment as a “pressure cooker,” and that’s when both of the voices in my head were like, Yeah, you need to leave.
I set up a meeting with my manager via an email that was probably stilted and uncomfortable like, “Hello, we need to do a meeting very soon please thank you this is normal business I am doing normal business.” When we met, my manager was like, “Is this the meeting I think it is?” and I was like, “Yeah.” Our conversation was brief, much shorter than when I quit my greeting card job, but I still managed to cry. I cried partially out of embarrassment that I was leaving so soon (the idea of looking incompetent or like a failure to anyone is only what literally keeps me up at night!), but I mostly cried out of relief that I was finally having the conversation aloud with the person who needed to hear it. My manager expressed little surprise at my quitting and said I was more of a “writer’s writer” anyway. I said thank you, like she meant it as a compliment. She was more of a “manager’s manager.”
The two weeks between that meeting and my last day were wildly uncomfortable. I took full advantage of working off-site. I left at five. I didn’t wait in line for the office’s weekly 4 p.m. Friday margaritas. My exit interview with HR was on what would have been my two-month work anniversary. When I left the parking garage for the last time, I didn’t cry.
* * *
In late June of 2015, I was single, by my own doing, for the first time in four years. It felt fun! And shiny! And new! I had wine and cheese for dinner! I watched hour-long makeup tutorials on YouTube without headphones! I flirted with a barista who didn’t flirt back! I was functioning on rumspringa-levels of sudden liberation, hurriedly trying to experience years’ worth of dating i
n my twenties as quickly as I could. This feeling of “everything all at once” in no way speaks to my ability to dive, head first, into the proverbial pool. (I am much more a “dip a toe in, watch some people’s reaction to the water, dip another toe in, assess the water from afar some more, finally decide to climb in right as the lifeguard’s blowing the whistle to signal end of day” kind of person.) I mostly just didn’t want to feel behind, dating-wise.
I signed up for Tinder! I deleted Tinder! I ran with my sudden desire to go out and stay out late on a weeknight! I knew the feeling of freedom would wear off as soon as I was by myself for more than a few moments. But in the meantime, I was conducting my own rom-com montage where I was trying on multiple floppy hats, if you know what I mean. (What I mean is that I literally bought a hat. Also, I fucked a bunch.)
I even had a Rebound! I mean, he was/is a human, but for the purposes of this anecdote, he was a Rebound. Rebound was different! And new! And did I mention different? Rebound made me feel sexy! Rebound made me feel wanted! Rebound bought a shitty $5 vibrator off Amazon after the first night we hung out because chivalry or something! I remember telling people how amazing it was to be a twenty-first-century human woman who could have a physical relationship without catching feelings. I remember telling myself that I wouldn’t catch feelings. (Reader, I caught feelings.)
The feelings I caught were less about me wanting to have a serious, committed, or even defined relationship with Rebound and more about me realizing that Rebound was, in fact, a rebound. The shininess of dating again wore off. I quickly remembered that part of casual dating was sometimes people treat you shitty just because they can. I didn’t feel valued. I didn’t feel loved. I was starting to feel gross and bored instead of good or even neutral.
