Censorship

It was a sad day, several months back, when my boss blurted out to me, "Oh yeah, I read your blog all the time."

"YOU read my blog???"

"Oh yeah, you’re a great writer."

And instead of coming back with something appropriate like ‘thank you’, all I could think was SHIT!!!! What had I written about work? Who had I cut down? What had I complained about? All these thoughts about what I could have written that might affect me negatively at my job came rushing into my head. I always thought you had to eat too much ice cream to get a brain freeze, but no – you just need to be caught doing something that isn’t illegal but could still get you into a heap of trouble.

So the casual stroll my outer self took back to my office belied the agitated state my inner self was wrapped in. "ShitShitShitShitShit!" I kept thinking to myself. So I sat down and pulled up my blog and proceeded to go through and delete every post I had written that concerned my job.

And then I was mad. I was mad that I was allowing myself to be censored – not because someone told me to stop doing something, but because I thought it would be best to not dig the ditch any deeper. See, I was trying hard to fit into my office; no one there looks like me. That is, in an office of 45 people that is 72% male, I am the only one who shaves his head, has any kind of facial hair, has my kind of build, and sports a tattoo. Everyone else looks like he just stepped out of a Brooks Brothers ad. So in an effort to "fit in", I didn’t want something personal like my blog to affect my professional career.

The sad thing is, there is a TON of stuff I could write about. It’s corporate America, for petesake: where they won’t spend money to hire a receptionist but thousands are spent each month keeping free sodas in the refrigerator. And I can’t write about this stuff.

Perhaps I will start another blog where I just complain about my job. And if I do, I will let you know where that is. You just have to keep my boss distracted long enough for me to do that.