Scenes From a Crumbling Creative Class
And can we bring shame back?
Welcome to Mess & Noise. Last week featured my public health fever dreams and a bland sandwich. If you’re new here, I’ve written about big startup mistakes, the embarrassment of grief, and why kids are “over-scheduled.”
New for 2025: Paid subscribers will receive Poor Bastard, my personal essays/memoir in monthly installments. More details below!
I’ve been a freelance copywriter for most of my career. That’s the bulk of 20 years making it work in NYC and only becoming destitute every now and then. The health of my little lifestyle business depends on the massive growth of other businesses — namely old categories with new “tech” suffixes.
The uncertainty of freelancing makes you sensitive to the slightest vibe shifts in your industry. Like codependent partners or emotionally neglected children, freelancers are hyper vigilant around the tone and frequency of client communication. We eavesdrop on other freelancers’ client calls to see what they’re up to and who is hiring them. We anxiously “check in” to read the weather and predict the future.
But this past year was free of nuance.
There were big signs in early 2023 after ChatGPT's release and Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, when he fired 80% of its staff. My mid-career denial evaporated by the end of that year, when layoffs became a trend and rippled into the full-fledged Patagonia Vest Recession.
By spring of 2024 I had to cancel my co-working membership and join the plebs in coffee shops to work on a few little projects that trickled in. Throughout that summer, I noticed lots of laptops stayed shut while people met up to commiserate about the upcoming election and their job situations.
One guy confided to his friend how “small” he feels now that he’s making less money than his wife. One woman shared her startup idea over a long lunch: a co-working space with licensed therapists on site at all times.
And yet, no one in mainstream media would shut up about strong jobs reports. I dug into this a little with Stacey Vanek Smith at one point.
Once summer was over, the number of lapsed freelancers in cafes seemed to dwindle and tables grew emptier by the week. Were people staying home because there’s no work to do? Moving back to Ohio with their parents? Based on the number of ghost listings, I doubt they all got RTO jobs.
I saw one guy reading a novel at 8am on a Tuesday instead of hunching over his laptop. Cute in any other context, straight-up ominous in this one. The frustrated novelist in me assumed he lost his job, didn’t tell his wife, pretended to leave for work that morning, and hid out in a coffee shop with a book instead.
All the bizarreness hit a high note in December when I was camped at a mostly empty place in my neighborhood and a group of chatty construction workers came in for breakfast.
There were five of them plus their foreman, still in bright orange vests, ostensibly on break from one of the dozen Build Back Better jobs underway in central Brooklyn. They chose a sit-down meal at this sage green, Martha Stewart-ass cafe instead of grabbing a bacon-egg-and-cheese at the corner deli.
I did my best eavesdropping while they ate $12 focaccia sandwiches:
They talked (joked?) about buying Trump watches (avg. price $1,450)
One of them told a story about a guy who picked up a group of Mexican day laborers in a U-Haul, saying he needed yard work done. Instead, this man dropped them off at an ICE office. This was followed by casual chuckles and one guy said, “And they ran, right?”
They talked about travel. One said he wants to climb the pyramids in Egypt. Another said he’d rather see Aztec pyramids, which are in South America. One heard Iran is beautiful but Americans aren’t allowed to travel there, just like Cuba. Another said actually, Trump ended that, you’re allowed to travel to Cuba now.
On their way out, one of them ordered a pastry and a cappuccino to go and the others called him bougie. He proudly agreed, “I am bougie, bro.”
Let me say I love a chunky group of MAGA-lites taking up space in a precious lil’ cafe normally occupied by skinny art directors. New York is most interesting when demos clash in 3rd spaces.
I also think “knowledge workers” like me losing income is no more tragic than like, a coal miner being replaced by a solar-powered robot or whatever. I don’t begrudge anyone a $12 breakfast sandwich, even if the college educated among us are paying for them with MasterCards. We all deserve our little treats, we all get hit with recessions. (Well, 99% of us anyway.)
What irked me was these dudes were balling out on financial fuel from the last administration’s infrastructure spending, and celebrating their windfall by buying Trump watches. For their sake, I hope the resale value of their new bling holds when the D.O.T. gets gutted.
As for knowledge workers, maybe someone should start an online forklift course or something. I have no idea where or how we pivot.
Introducing: Poor Bastard
60% of readers surveyed said they’d like to see more personal essay/memoir type stuff in this newsletter. (It was the second most popular request behind “more sandwiches,” at 90%).
I definitely want to do more of this — posts like Grief is a Ghost, The Mess and the Noise, and my Riot Grrrl story are some close examples. It’s rewarding, but also emotionally taxing and kind of embarrassing, so I’ll be testing these pieces behind a paywall.
Yes, for the low-low price of $5 per month or $50 per year, I will whore out my soul in the form of personal essays on loss, ambition, girlhood, music, addiction, recovery, the 90s and 2000s, and whatever else. I’m calling it “Poor Bastard” because it was a funny expression of sympathy my dad used for anyone who’s life turned out less than spectacular.
If you want to know why that’s ironic, you’ll have to read the memoirs!
Speaking of embarrassment:
Let’s Bring Shame Back!
The world would be an insufferable place if everyone was as chronically, hereditarily embarrassed by their own existence as me. But I would like some people to just stop and have a moment of self-doubt.
Maybe call it a day, hide under the covers, and wonder, “What’s the point of anything, anyway?”
I’m speaking specifically to:
Elon Musk and his band of lil’ rascals* raiding the U.S. Treasury
All Cybertruck drivers
Actually, that’s the whole list. And it’s where this letter ends. See you next week!
❤️