Things Could Be Worse And

I Believe People Think As A Group More Often Than We Might Realize Or Care To Admit. We Like To Believe That We Act As Individuals And Nothing More, But Time And Again - In Corporations And Business, In Politics And Religion, In Fashion And Culture, And In Friendships And Social Circles - We Think And Do As One.

I Think One Of The Ways You Avoid Being Angry Is To Avoid Being Angry At The People In Power. They Might Do Crappy Things, And Piss You Off, And Make Bad Decisions, But They Shouldn't Be Hated Simply Because They're In Power. And I Thought It Was Important To Humanize Them If The Book Was Going To Be Even-handed To All The Different Ways You Encounter People At Work.

I Think A Fairly Common Behavior Among Fiction Writers Is That They Want To Help. They're Generally Charitable People. They're Interested In The World. They're Curious, They're Empathetic. They Understand Suffering. They Don't Turn Away From That. But What They Do Is Essentially Useless. Except For The Sake Of The Thing Itself.

Between The Time I First Started Working In Advertising In 1998 And Now, The Word Brand Has Replaced Identity. We Are No Longer Individuals So Much As We Are Brands. We're Individual Brands. Individuals Are Basically Left To Define Their Individuality By Staying Off The Internet, Which In And Of Itself Can Be A Brand, The Opting-out Brand.

Yet For All The Depression No One Ever Quit. When Someone Quit, We Couldn't Believe It. 'i'm Becoming A Rafting Instructor On The Colorado River,' They Said. 'i'm Touring College Towns With My Garage Band.' We Were Dumbfounded. It Was Like They Were From Another Planet. Where Had They Found The Derring-do? What Would They Do About Car Payments? We Got Together For Going Away Drinks On Their Final Day And Tried To Hide Our Envy While Reminding Ourselves That We Still Had The Freedom And Luxury To Shop Indiscriminately.