Let me be a cog in the wheel
Adventures of Escape from a climate activist
I have a strange conundrum. I am a marketer and I am supposed to make people want stuff. Like really want it. I have to serve ads at the right time, stalk people and know their preferences and ensure I hit them at the right spot at the right time. I use my dear friends Google and Meta who are ready to sell the deepest of data in the most innovative ways.
I have to be present at shoots, pretend I know what is happening, and share my commentary on light fixtures and the model’s hairstyle
The Climate activist in me is not always aligned with such plans. She takes over at times and asks questions at the strangest of times
Am I creating the need for something which is superfluous and not important? This is before a review meeting where I have to show how my marketing efforts have doubled traffic tripled sales and quadrupled brand love. I try to shut her up, but she comes back time and again with deep questions. She seeks meaning and purpose in whatever she does. I entertained her a couple of years ago when I worked for a non-profit, but she started seeking more meaning, the more I gave her, the more dissatisfied she grew. So I shut her up and came back to my normal life.
That of being a marketer in a sea of consumers. There is nothing that sets me apart from other career climbers and creepers. Like all of them, I have a ton of work thrown at me, I try to put them into neat buckets and deliver the best I can while navigating ambiguity and feeling a sense of purposeless existence.
Before I realized I have turned 30 and spent almost a decade at work without any major achievements. I have not starred on the Forbes 30 under 30, nor have I recommendations on LinkedIn with words like visionary, thought leader, or the best of all growth-hacker.
But I have some money in my bank account, in case I want to run away and do nothing for a while. Like becoming a naturalist who studies the backside of bugs or something truly horrible like a writer who discloses the deepest of her thoughts. I have several escape plans charted out, but the Climate activist forces me to live in the here and now.
She has an eye for Climate problems and a circle of friends who are similar to her. They discuss climate over wine, and coffee and read climate articles in the loo. They think of climate when they are driving, walking, running, and sleeping.
I thankfully escaped from her and found a cushy job where I am a cog in a large wheel, and I am unrecognizable from the rest. My hope is I become so synchronous with the others that she is unable to tell me apart.
There are some perks in my job like traveling for work, where I get a sense of escaping from pointlessness to experience pointlessness in a different geography But she does not let me enjoy my travels, my flights, and the little perks of my job. She hovers over me, threatening me with guilt and consequence on the planet. As if I alone could make a difference
For now, I have shut her up in the attic. She continues to think of a world filled with Climate solutions and how each of us can be change agents. I hear her rattling in the attic, she needs to be let out so that she can lecture the whole world. If you see her run for cover and do not disclose where I am at.
