the waters we swim in

A lesson I learned from quitting my job and finding a new one.

Imagine this:

You’re in a room with others, and you’re all given a copy of the same book. Your instructions are to read. This is your job.

A tall figure walks around the room, watching you read.

So, you’re reading along, getting a bit invested in some of the set-up for the story—maybe one of the characters seems funny or the setting feels fresh. It feels a bit amateurish, and quite confusing and contradictory. But, okay, you think. I’ll keep reading. You usually like reading, after all.

Then you turn the next page…and there’s nothing there. Pages are ripped out. Some are there, but mostly blank. Littered with fragmented words or phrases, half ideas, allusions to things that seem to have been ripped out.

You flip to the end and there’s a single sentence on the last page: it’s where you’re supposed to end up, by the end of the story. It’s nowhere you’d actually like to go.

You look around, bewildered. You flip the book back and forth in your hands. It’s a book, but it’s not a story. There …