Several years ago, right after New Year's Eve, I slipped on ice, fell, and broke some bones—and it didn't teach me anything about PPC marketing or the B2B sector.
In fact, my recovery was pretty sweet.
I spent around two months at home, hobbling on crutches, playing games on my PS4 and re-watching The Simpsons.
I mean, the injury sucked, and I still have some underlying problems as a result (my butt hurts when the weather is about to change, it turns out I became the world's least glamorous meteorologist superhero). But I devoted 0 percent of my mental capacity to work.
If anything, the reason I was out and about the day after New Year's Eve was that I wanted to better myself and exercise more. So I took a nice, refreshing morning walk that turned into an ambulance ride—flashing lights, sirens, the whole shebang. I would have been better off if I hadn't attempted any pErSoNaL gRoWtH.
My boss would call me regularly, very concerned about my health and even more concerned that having a position on your team with the bus factor of 1 isn't optimal. All I could say was that, sadly, my current activity level only involved laying down and balancing a bowl of chips on my chest as I chuckled at random Instagram memes.
You know what, I think I kinda misled you with my hook.
I did learn a lesson.
The lesson was: I am so burnt out and overworked that a serious accident somehow became an opportunity to relax and enjoy doing stuff I actually like.
Do you know what I did with the aforementioned lesson?
Nothing, because I needed the job, it paid well and it didn't suck.
It might be my poorly trained LinkedIn algorithm, but I only ever see people trying to uplift me by regaling the tales of how their kids lost their baby teeth and how this led them to try new kinds of content creation (the parents, I mean, not the kids, though I'm up for reading 0/5 tooth fairy reviews any time).
Not telling their followers that, yeah, sometimes shit sucks, and you'd love to network and pivot and grow and take classes. But your bank account, bills, or your town's geography only let you 'girlboss, groceries and grumble.'
I'm not saying we should stay forever miserable, but sometimes the only change you can make is changing how you think about things.
So, instead of writing a LinkedIn post, I decided to write one on Substack.
Listen, I swear it's only a little bit hypocritical.
In the spirit of my bullheaded contrarianism, I'm here to say you're not lazy or inconsistent if you don’t churn out two thousand words a day (hello, Mr. King and his often recommended but never critically examined advice). You’re not a failure if your career involves unloading boxes of questionably fresh bananas. You just don't live in a fabricated social media reality where every challenge furthers your growth and generates a new CV entry. I could have done without my broken ass or the assorted variety of trauma I acquired in my adulthood. It didn't boost my SEO or make me a better person; it all just...kinda happened.
And as it turns out, I am stubborn enough to persevere.
And you are, too.
Whether it's overly critical teachers who mocked your watercolor paintings, literary judges who called your favorite genre trash, or a "friend" who ridiculed your singing - the only lesson we should take from them is - to keep going.
Even if it's not glorious, or deep, or life-changing.
Actually, especially if it isn't.
Write Substack posts about how annoying professional networking is, share your doodles of elephants with too many legs, go photograph crows dissecting an unfinished cheeseburger in the middle of tram tracks.
Not everything HAS to be deep; not everything NEEDS a lesson.
Sometimes you just want to have fun, and sometimes, things just suck, and all you can do is to bitch about it publicly.
Just, ideally, please don't break any bones.
Not even for content.