As anyone who works in America knows, our country’s romanticizing of the hustle and grind work culture demands that we strive. Always reach for more. More recognition. More money. More influence. More power. More subordinates. More better. More whatever. Resting on your laurels? That’s for the weak and lazy. Weekends? If you must, slacker. 

Capitalism, baby! 

Since the onset of Covid and the work from home revolution, American workers of all generations have been afforded flexibility and autonomy in the way they work that was unthkinkable for most people before the pandemic. People learned what it was like to not have their job draped over every aspect of their existence. They learned what they could do with the hour or two or more each day that they used to spend commuting. They’ve relished in little pleasures like being able to start cooking dinner while on a meeting. To be able to do a load of laundry in the middle of a Tuesday. Some people enjoyed spending more time with their kids. Some figured out that they did not enjoy spending so much time with their spouse. Some discovered that they had handed over their whole life to work. That was the American way. 

But then there was the “great resignation” in which people lit the job market on fire looking for new jobs where they could double down on their newfound freedoms and make more money doing it. Then there was the phenomenon of “quiet quitting,” in which, gasp, people only did the things their job required of them and no more. 

In other words, a good portion of people checked out of hotel hustle. They took a step back and looked that the bigger picture of their lives. The pandemic forced us all to slow down. For some, that slowness inspired massive life changes and a total reordering of priorities. A lot of workaholic hustlers and strivers realized that work does not, in fact, have to be one’s entire personality. 

[NOTE: I am, for the purposes of this digressive little piece, talking about white collar workers. Those of us who sit in front of a computer all day completing tasks of greater or lesser importance to our corporate overlords. In regard to other workers—from nurses to nannies, bus drivers to busboys, contractors to air traffic controllers, teachers, truck drivers, retail workers, waiters, bartenders, delivery drivers, etc—ie, essential workers: the percentage of these workers who often don’t enjoy the benefits of sick days or parental leave or health insurance, or in an alarming number of cases, even a living wage, is shamefully high. If you need to work two or three jobs to cover rent, food, childcare and/or healthcare, the hustle is non-negotiable. It is an existential necessity.] 

I’m nearly 50 and I got a late start on my “real-job” career, getting into the ridiculous and weird vales of advertising at 32. So it doesn’t surprise me that all of my bosses—even the bosses of my bosses—are all younger than me. Some by only a couple years, but many of them by a decade or more. 

I’ve been holding steady at my current position, associate creative director, for long enough that I’d need to consult my LinkedIn profile to figure out how many years it’s been. It’s the advertising equivalent of middle management. I manage creative projects and copywriters, liaise with client services managers, strategists, project managers, and my creative directors. I also still do the work of any advertising copywriter, that is, write scripts, write headlines and copy, come up with whacky ideas for ad campaigns and other “deliverables,” as we call them in the biz.

At any rate, I am observing that I do not, as maybe I should, feel one bit tetchy that I am on the verge of an automatic AARP membership and have not yet reached a new level of my career. 

The next career step is to become a creative director. There was a time—not terribly long ago—where I longed for that role. I wanted to look back on the view of my employed life, from bartending in a dive to being a creative director at a reputable advertising agency, and really feel the distance, the difference, from where I started to where I got to. I wanted the affirmation that I was doing a good job. And the salary bump wouldn’t hurt either. 

“I would prefer not to.”

—Bartleby, from Bartleby the Scrivener, by Herman Melville

If you weren’t an English major, you may have never encountered Herman Melville’s story Bartleby the Scrivener. Bartleby is the OG quiet quitter. When his boss asked him to do something, he’d say simply, “I’d prefer not to.”

Over the last couple years I have learned that when it comes to being a creative director, I’m with Bartleby. Whether I’ve revoked my ambition or just downgraded it, I’m not sure yet. I have watched my creative directors, learned from them. I see what the job entails. It includes a slew of shit I want nothing to do with: budgets, timing, client shmoozing, managing up to the C-suite, managing resources. It’s not that I don’t have the ability to do all that; I do some of it already. But they do it under this lacquer of intense pressure, endless hours and constant stress. I see my creative directors strain like wood in an ever-tightening vice, quiet fissures deepening. 

From what I can tell, the generous salary that comes with the position is, essentially, a bribe for you to abandon your life. Or maybe not totally abandon it, but definitely sideline huge swathes of your existence for the work. It’s being responsive to your executive creative director sending you a message at 9:54 at night. It’s running high-stakes pitches on impossible timelines. It’s spending 9 hours a day in meetings followed by god knows how many hours of doing the work you didn’t have time to do all day because you were in meetings. (Not that I don’t have days exactly like that—but they are occasional. Few times a month or maybe for 3-4 weeks then it chills out a bit. From what I can tell, there is no chill-out phase for creative directors.)

But being a creative director is also about mentorship. It’s helping younger creatives get better and better at what they do, which is the part of the job that entices me the most (besides the salary). Also, it’s being in a better position to control the work, and answering to slightly fewer higher-paid opinions up the ladder. I know it’s not all bad. The things I would love about it, I would really love. But the things that I would hate about it would be numerous, unavoidable and disruptive to my peaceful little life.

Even among my younger coworkers—people in their twenties and thirties, who got their “real” job early, right out of college, who are primed for ambition—many of them likewise have come to observe the insanity of the grinding work culture we exist in and simply opt out of it. They do their work, excellently, to the highest standards. They are reliable, good-natured and supportive of their teams. They are intelligent, talented people who would all make excellent managers. But I hear from many of them, they are in no hurry to climb the ladder. This is not “quiet quitting.” This is preserving a life. This is prioritizing relationships and family and friends and all those other important things that happen outside of work. This is embracing the important lesson of shutting the laptop and turning off notifications and being a human instead of a cog in the machine of American capitalism.

I don’t believe I’m in any danger of being promoted. Not because I’m in poor standing at my job. Just because I still lack a couple of requisite accomplishments to reach that level (eg, awards, industry recognition, some earth-shattering creative work that brought in business, etc.) If I ever were to be offered that promotion, if I took it, I would be abdicating my goal of writing a novel or three. It would be, essentially, a further abandonment of my own creative work in favor of my agency’s and my clients’ creative (and not so creative) work. All for a more comfortable salary and the affirmation of my professional bona fides. In other words, a pat on the head and a nice treat. A treat that could finally get my 401k into a place that might make it possible to retire before I’m 75. But still. 

I do not labor under the misapprehension that the only thing keeping me from being a published novelist is my day job. The thing that keeps me from writing fiction full time is me. Myself. You guys, I am so fucking lazy. It would appear my work ethic, while generally excellent, is not limitless. Even at my current level, by the end of a workday, I’m tapped out, scraped clean. Thinking is hard—let alone writing.

If that promotion ever does come my way, I am truly curious as to what my reaction will be, whether I’ll take it or rest here on my laurels that are comfy enough, and continue to believe (delude myself) that I will finish at least one of my fucking novels.