Every Day Will Not Be Your Best
“Never be so kind you forget to be clever.
Never be so clever you forget to be kind.”
-Taylor Swift, song marjorie, 2020
I bombed last week. And, as a result, I felt a genuine growth spurt.
Not the teenage variety, but the mental kind. Reminded me how growth is transformative, but the morphing can be uncomfortable and awkward, whether that means expanding plates in the ‘knee bones connected to the thigh bones,’ or the few hardy brain cells I have left firing off new synapses.
In an effort to craft a seasonally relevant article for our December issue, I was striving for holiday shopping humor. I initially repurposed an actual letter I wrote (but never sent) to Hollister management. Not the town, the store.
Exasperated venting from yours truly, Mom on the Tipping Point who, after a trying day at the Sun Valley Mall, had enough of Hollister’s perfume-spritzing Tween Cave blaring music. All tactics aimed at impressionable kids hoping to bolster their popularity via a clothing brand.
My young daughters, naturally, gulped their proverbial Kool-Aid – much to my chagrin – likely because I foolishly coveted the exact same thing in my day. Just swap the labels: Abercrombie and Hollister for Izod and Calvin Klein.
I knocked out my rant in 2010, never sending it anywhere, but saving it for unknown reasons.
Maybe to teach my future self this lesson: nobody wants to hear an Orinda parent stewing about her shopping trip to the mall. Even if the sales clerks were condescending, transporting me back to middle school geekdom with their unwillingness to make eye contact. I came across as entitled and insensitive in the letter.
I was damn lucky to be able to afford to buy my kid a pair of their overpriced jeans. As for feeling unseen by the store staff, that’s where I really needed to ‘Shut The Front Door.’ The noxious perfume spritzing, however, may have been my one reasonable objection.
My outburst wasn’t intended to be a Karen-thing, more like an expression of absurdity and resentment that a brand focused on making both the wearers and the adult purchasers feel so insecure about themselves could rake in such profits.
In a notable cultural shift, many of today’s rising stars of future adulthood have embraced thrifting and online buy/sell/trade groups. Astounding how sensible and frugal our kids become once it’s their nickel. “Nickel?” they remark. “How quaint.”
Rescuing me from a potential debacle was my phenomenal book club, Orinda’s Read Hot Mamas. Accustomed to reading and critiquing the written word together without fear of judgment or hurt feelings (seriously, it’s hard to say “I hated this book” when your respected and beloved friend selected it, but it’s happened), I asked my book club members for their honest assessment of my Hollister
letter.
Consensus: Not my best work.
I’ve received an early holiday present: loyal friends who will 1) take time out of their busy schedules to stop and read something I’ve written, and 2) return honest, heartfelt criticism giftwrapped in gentleness.
I feel that growth spurt. My skin is now thicker.
In becoming a wiser, more confident writer – or any occupation, really, but especially creative ones – one must fight the powerful urge to shrink in embarrassment from missing the mark. Get back up on the horse that threw ya.
In addition to TayTay’s, I’ll add some wisdom my former employer, Roy Spence, past president of GSD&M Advertising in Austin, Texas, shared in a little book he wrote recently, The Ten Essential Hugs of Life. I’ll note that his definition of “failure” is when one stops caring, quits trying or gives up.
“There is a huge difference between failing and coming up short. Coming up short is simply playing it all out and not winning. Failing is a violation of character. Don’t confuse the two.”
Joyful Holidays to all!
