Rejoining Corporate America

Here I go again on my own...

Well, there it is. After more than nine months doing the at-home gig, I'm about to re-enter the creative slaughterhouse known as Corporate Officedom.

What am I thinking?

It was on a whim, a "look at this" email from my wife, that I applied for this position; a process I not only put off for a couple of days, but that I refused to take very seriously, even as I was entering the second gauntlet of on-site interviews.

After all these months of applications and phone "screenings" and mindlessly pumping out freelance work to pay my half of the rent, I have received and accepted an honest-to-gawd offer to work for a faceless, money sucking company that offers bonuses and 401Ks and all kinds of perks that make the working man salivate and the perennial jokester just a bit more nervous. Being something in-between, I believe I may just have a complete and total nervous/midlife breakdown/crisis right here as I type.

You never know.

Hell, I must have filled out 50 or so online applications in the first 3 months after layoff; a sort-of panicky response to having the carpet you walk on lit on fire just as you were getting comfortable feeling the fibers between your toes. I applied to anything and everything labeled "content;" it didn't matter that half the companies were bullshit startup creative agencies littered throughout the Western corridor and the other half soul-sucking corporate beasts looking for someone to prick a million times before they die.

I had interviews. I had second interviews. I even had a couple final interviews. Nothing panned out. I was left to ponder and pontificate, and to scrape what was left of my dignity off the keyboard I used to complete the SUPER WONDERLIC PERSONALITY test (which I failed, of course). I was only after putting myself through the ringer time and again that I began to accept and even enjoy my fate as a perpetual freelance writing jock; some hopeless freak pumping mindless (but carefully formatted!) made-for Web drivel into the digital nethersphere for pennies on the dollar.

It was beginning to grow on me.

My hatred for recruiters was fostered and reinforced continually. I was nearing the point where new job opportunities were for the suckers who relished corporate brainwashing and who didn't mind funneling their imagination into soulless, finely-tuned B2C garbage that has/had no purpose but to meet engagement and call-to-action benchmarks that have no real bearing on anything useful anyway.

Blah.




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