Complicated Feelings: Coolness, Professionalism, and Being Known

I guess I just don’t give a shit anymore

Good evening! It is now the middle of May and, contrary to the popular adage, rain continues to fall in the District of Columbia. I like to imagine that rain is every piece of goodwill I have ever shown finding its way back to my skin, and when it quells a punishing heat how can I think differently? I’ve done some excellent tallying: this is the fourteenth essay I have written this year, accompanied on Substack by two short stories and three poems. I still feel as though I am tiptoeing across the starting line of my creative prime. It is exhilarating and frightening and frustrating all at once.

I love D.C. I love the Ethiopian restaurants and go-go music and the dusting of flower petals on my front porch; the embraces I share at open mics and the vignettes of peoples’ lives I witness on bus routes; the queerness and the Blackness and the free museums. Despite everything, I still feel a burst of energy when I look south and see the Capitol dome obstructing the horizon. I moved here from Boston on the Amtrak train with two duffle bags packed to their respective limits. I stepped into the winter air outside Union Station, nervous and excited and twenty-two. Three months into my professional career the entire world shut down and everyone’s brain broke. I don’t blame them for it, my brain broke too. But I’m tired of using that as an excuse. We are collectively ignoring a litany of deep systemic issues. Today, I want to focus on professionalism and its pitfalls at a time of extreme wealth disparities – where young people who say they cannot afford what they need are told “that’s just what being young is” by people who were young in an entirely different world.

I’m fiercely gifted at making first impressions. I always have been, that is, when I wasn’t too many drinks deep. From an early age I knew how to stand taller than my stature allowed and extend a hand to anyone, and, for better or worse, my impressions last. The ordeal of being known, the nakedness of that endeavor, frightens a lot of people, but it has never frightened me. Perhaps this is an effort to know myself better, because every person I let know me is a beacon, and even someone as good at hiding as I am has no choice but to give in to the spotlight. I don’t know that anyone has ever thought of me as cool… “cool” is subjective… but I do know that I find it awfully rare for someone to be both cool and interesting. One of the loudest and stickiest lessons I learned in the course of this heavy year is how to differentiate what I know I like from what I perceive to be cool. I like to turn the volume up and dance like a lighter-flame as I walk down the street. I like to go home early and watch re-runs of 30 Rock while sipping seltzer from a wine glass. I like to watch the dusk-infected sky turn onyx from my back porch and imagine poems gestating somewhere in my kintsugi skull. Whether or not any of these things make me cool is not a consideration I have thought to take, nor do I plan to.

I feel no incentive to strive for dignity with the world as it is. A couple of weeks ago I was on the bus to meet my sister for a coffee when a child erupted into a rapturous meltdown. His mother looked mortified as she tried to calm him and glanced at all the other passengers in apology and in recognition that there is nothing worse than a crying child on public transport. I clutched my backpack to my chest and tried to focus on my book after giving the stressed mother a knowing look and soft smile… and all I could think about was how nice it would have felt to throw a tantrum of my own; to release what I’d been carrying in one cathartic motion.

I’ve fought so viciously to get to where I am, and every part of my life, after falling apart, is falling in line… except for my professional life. I work odd jobs in addition to my day job and have been trying my best to advance my career by having as many conversations as I can and employing as much candor as is possible within the boundaries of professionalism. Perhaps I have a mental block about second jobs because the last time I got an “official” second job I nearly died. The conversations don’t go anywhere, and I respect the impossible position everyone is in these days, but the simple truth is that my position is both impossible and unsustainable, especially on the verge of recession. The professional world has not caught up with the fact that the actual world is changing faster than it can keep up, and many of the people who can drive change continue to operate on the assumption that they still live in the world they grew up in: a world where education is valued and home ownership is a viable goal… a world that has been and continues to be systemically dismantled.

To be clear: social order is a good thing and I am not suggesting that everyone should engage in acrobatic hysterics on their morning commute. I am saying that the careful construction of several distinct selves based on rigid social expectations demanded by professionalism and the pursuit of ‘coolness’ is more taxing than it is beneficial. Black and queer academics have written about it extensively and correctly noted that codeswitching is often necessary to advance professionally, but professionalism polices every piece of a person from how they dress to how they speak and, ultimately, how they think.

The job market in D.C. right now is a concrete wall. I have been applying for two years and have gotten close to my next step several times. It’s not that there are no jobs available, there are plenty; it’s that more jobs have been cut than are available, and such a huge portion of residents are out of work and thus become competition. I maintain a spreadsheet of every role and every organization I have applied to and every week it gets bigger and redder. There is not a single person in this city who is not, or does not know, someone who has been affected by DOGE’s job cuts. It has almost become a running joke, the curt phrase “it happened” paints an entire picture for everyone in the room to swallow nervously and prod a napkin across the table. “Sorry”. Sorry for what? Costs are rising and wages are not. Evidently it is unprofessional to say this, but I’m angry at the people spearheading this and I am angry at the people celebrating this and, I hate to admit it but, I’m angry at the people who could have helped me when I asked them to and didn’t.

I feel unheard. Worse, I feel disregarded. Every contribution I’ve ever made resulted in a pat on the back with no actual substantive change. So I stopped trying to contribute. Every time I try to talk about it feels like I am digging my fingernails into my throat and tearing out my tongue.

It’s about money. As deep a disdain as I have for that reality, and as much as I wish I could change it, everything always comes back to money. Until, magically, above a certain income level, it suddenly stops, and a person forgets how it feels for everything to be about money because they are no longer victims of it.

Professionalism is a concept founded in white supremacy and designed to uphold it. My whiteness allows me to test the limits of professionalism because I exist within it in a way my Black friends and colleagues do not. I suppose I’m not afraid to write this for two reasons: the first being that in a lot of ways my identity as a writer feels distinct from my identity as a professional, and the second being that I no longer care to protect the version of myself that has lofty professional ambitions. Let me explain.

There is a lot of handwringing among professionals – compartmentalization, inaction, even gaslighting – regarding the political climate, because workers are expected to throw their wellness on the fire to prevent it from impacting business. Professionalism is a glue trap and instead of stripping to get unstuck everyone is just watching the destruction inch closer. There has been a forceful takeover and erosion of checks and balances in the most powerful government in the world and nobody seems to be saying it in plain language. Millions of lives are at the mercy of a few men’s egos, and the consequences – of funding cuts, of layoffs, of aid cessation – will be felt for generations. Children are dying of hunger in Gaza due to an intentional blockade and my tax dollars are being used to support it, and professionalism requires me to keep my pretty mouth closed in the desperate hope that I might get a 3% raise to combat price-gouging, predatory credit rates, and inflation, so that I can continue to survive in an increasingly unsurvivable world. That’s not a game I’m willing to play, and if writing this essay is a death sentence for the professional version of me, so be it.

Professionalism is about deference to power with the goal of one day having a seat of power. Professionalism resents those who talk openly about money, those who are too loud, too queer, too different, and it is routinely weaponized as a political tool (think about the tan suit, Zelenskyy’s outfit, “Gen Z boss and a mini”... it’s all tied in with outrage culture).

I’m sick of biting my tongue, it makes me ill.

David Hogg’s ousting at the DNC is the perfect encapsulation of this. Hogg made waves when he announced he would allocate funds to encourage primary challengers for long-held safe blue seats held by politicians who are not doing enough to meet the moment. With the scale of backlash from “professional” operatives in the Democratic party, you might think he shat on an American flag. Professionalism and respectability politics, more than being constricting, are the very death of bravery. In a moment of time that demands bold action, status quo professionals would rather use their energy curtailing boldness than incubating the next generation of leaders. He’s right. These fossils and their enablers are culpable for our current situation, and the suggestion that we should prioritize celebrating their storied careers over fighting for a liveable world is infantilizing and insane.

Now that I’ve expelled some of my anger on the topic, not unlike a tantrum on the bus, I must admit I feel a bit lighter, despite knowing that there’s certainly a realization coming… a realization that I can’t unfeel these feelings.

This might be silly but I keep asking people in real life to read my work, again and again. I know that it is a lot to ask of someone but it is important to me, and as much as I want to pretend to be coy and bashful, I know that I am a skilled writer. I know that it is part of the process to “sell” yourself, I just wish that some of the people in my life would be more willing customers. I’m worried that nobody is interested in reading anything anymore – no one is interested in knowing anything. That’s obviously not the case and is a symptom of a broader unease I feel with the way that things are going, but I still feel it so deeply. That is what these AI summaries and reinterpretations are to me – a forceful translation of the words I and other artists chose very carefully; words plucked from the parts of me that are hard to get to.

I do not fear being known, I fear being misunderstood.

Thank you for reading. If you found it worthwhile, please feel free to subscribe or share. As always, you can find me on Instagram and nowhere else on the Internet for now.

With Sincerity,

J.K.