How to Weep in Public by Jacqueline Novak

Author:Jacqueline Novak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2016-02-29T16:00:00+00:00

College is meant to train you not just for future bedroom skills but also for a future career or something, and by graduation I had fully immersed myself in stand-up comedy and creative writing. I even forwent a year abroad to “get ahead” in my improv troupe. I was trying to give myself a serious running start in the arts in college so when I graduated I’d have enough momentum to avoid getting a real job. I had been warned that a steady living makes people so “comfortable” they don’t pursue their art.

After hiding out at my parents’ for what felt like an appropriate postcollege jag, I decided that in order to become Steve Martin, I needed to live in New York City, not commute an hour and back by car to open mics I’d really like to be boozing willy-nilly at. To do that—see if you can follow the logic—I needed to have a job that would allow me to pay rent there. (It took my dad half a year of repeated explanations over Subway sandwiches to help me understand this logic.)

So I whipped up some spec ad campaigns and had a graphic artist at the local mom-and-pop photocopy shop place them on images. I’m particularly proud of a line I came up with for Subway’s new toasted subs: “Quit Cold Turkey.” I trolled Craigslist, got a job at a boutique ad agency in Tribeca, and then panicked. In fact, the weekend before I was set to start, I became convinced I was developing schizophrenia.

Looking back on that time—finishing school, moving to NYC, getting my first real job and semblance of an adult life—it would be easy to blame the following self-implosion on the natural horror of the corporate world. Going in to an office every day is undeniably terrible and soul destroying in every way for some of us, from the commute to the fluorescent lights to the fraying plastic smiles to the elevator conversation.

But to a depressed person it’s like Dante’s Inferno: everything overwhelming about life wrapped up in one. It’s all the pressure of trying to live up to expectations of others, all superficial BS.

On the other hand, there’s something almost reassuring about being hit over the head with everything you fear all at once. Maybe you can relate. Maybe you’re in a situation like I was, working ten to six at a funkily furnished company—pounded-copper sliding doors and a decorative motorcycle. (I am aware that those hours aren’t bad. But when depressed, any set times are oppressive.)

But there are some advanced depression techniques that I learned to master in the corporate world that have served me well ever since. For example, crying in the bathroom…a bathroom stall is the one place in a company where you can hide out and gather yourself, the one crumb of privacy you have left. Use it wisely. I liked to pretend the stall was my tiny apartment, and I’d hide in there like…a thumb puppet in a desk.

In addition to the art of the restroom refuge, I became a master at the unquestionable excuse.

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