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Amy Swift Crosby

the story is in the telling

Mileage.

May 10, 2022 · By Amy Swift Crosby

 

Literally and metaphorically, we define it as “the distance traveled.”

But not all mileage on life’s many road trips is equal, nor are all distances even perceptible. While some of our journeys beg for acknowledgement, others we prefer to travel under (emotional) cover.

Crossing a finish line, recovering from illness, giving birth, publishing a book — all observable, and anyone paying attention can easily see and appreciate the miles — both where we started and how far we’ve come. Recognition, even applause, is implied and often expected for certain labors. These miles have what I think of as two-way visibility. Easy to witness another’s joy (or pain) from the outside, easy to feel witnessed on the inside.

But there are other journey’s that are more of an “inside job” — times we each need to make our way through certain dark forests in what feels akin to the middle of the night. This is mileage where the emotional complexity calls for privacy and anonymity. We are the sole decider of what to reveal, and when (if ever.) This is analogous to one-way visibility — only we know our true circumstances, despite what iceberg tip can be seen from outside. We might be beset with rage, grief, chagrin or despondency, but no matter how high or low the volume internally, to the world we go dark and quiet for a spell. Nearby “witnesses” have to make nuanced decisions about how to express empathy, knowing that the “walker” has signaled social hibernation.

Of course, we are both “walker” and “witness” at any given time.

As the walker, the need for recognition — or, conversely, secrecy — is threaded to a complex web of what being “seen” in our mileage (then) means. Do I want people to know about my journey? What part? How much?

How we witness others in their respective miles traveled also bears some responsibility. How do we appreciate, identify, raise a glass? What is “enough”?

But, because visibility isn’t always two-way, it’s not simply the fork-in-the-road I’ve presented above. For one, there are the invisible miles — the kind we long to be seen in but (logistically or otherwise) can be hard for others to observe (and acknowledge).

Think…

Paperwork. Consider all the onerous admin you do for work-life or home-life, for the benefit of everyone involved. Bills paid, insurance claims filed, disputes waged — these get little (if any) credit. Necessary work, but largely invisible.

Future-planning. If you’re the magical fairy who books the vacation, invests the dollars, anticipates the waitlist — the forethought tasks, I call them — you know that while everyone appreciates them when they bear fruit, the months and weeks beforehand go largely unnoticed.

Housework is a famously underappreciated exertion that needs no explanation.

Maybe more significantly, but less discussed, is emotional labor. Are you always the one to make amends, investigate the feeling, anticipate the gift, manage the client/in-law/tricky friendship? Do you hold space where someone else sucks up air?

Invisible work can be classified as, “effort that’s hard to see or measure.” Some people need more appreciation for invisible work than others. But voiced or not, most of us wouldn’t mind more noticing here.

But there’s another, even more convoluted dimension to the mileage conversation: What happens when we agree on two-way visibility (we both think we’re seeing the same kind of mileage), but perception of miles traveled is still vastly different?

One of my favorite, (okay, irksome) examples of this gap is what I like to call, “the Great Start problem.”

As a copywriter, I work with creative agencies on strategy and messaging projects. Because of my role in the process, I am often the first person on the team to put ideas to paper — to press “send” on one of several rounds of words and concepts. This initial thinking — my first draft — can take days or weeks.

Whether the work is bullseye or not, being the first to submit work calls for a little egoic Teflon. I still have butterflies when I submit the words, even two-decades down the road. But what I’m (at least) sure of is that my mind has collected enough mileage over the years to assume my first draft is part one of a strong creative iteration.

So, when a creative director or other agency lead says the following words, I feel an emotional road flare go up. Those two words are, “great start.”

Seems innocent enough.

Surely, they mean to be encouraging.

But, what I actually hear is:

“You’ve barely touched the problem we’re trying to solve.”

There’s a mileage gap here (regardless of whether my perception of “great start” is valid or not.) The beginning for them isn’t at all the beginning for me, ten-plus hours (+20 years) into the work.

“Great start” underestimates what it takes to make meaning from a blank page.

“Great start” presumes minimal effort, despite maximum (if early) thinking.

But this is not a writing rant.

Imagine looking at early sketches for what will become a watercolor and telling the artist, “great start.” Unless this is a student who started two hours ago, it’s a bummer.

Think of a child at work on a sandcastle — whether it’s award-winning or dilapidated. Unless you know it’s only been 10 minutes of building, “great start” may offend the kid who started on it three hours ago.

The architect of effort/creative output, whatever her experience level, may not resonate with (the potentially condescending) “great start.”

There’s no mal intent in it, but there is a misunderstanding of miles traveled. The consequence? It’s defeating.

A defeated creative doesn’t want to stay on the project.

A defeated employee doesn’t want to show up for work.

A defeated child/spouse/friend doesn’t want to try… at all.

It’s interesting that it’s not just that we are seen, but that the depth and breadth of the work we put forth can be met with right-sized mileage.

So, how to be a more valuable witness to the miles invested — even when they are impossible to see?

Assume generously. The beginning for one is rarely the start for another.

Be specific in recognition. The best shout-outs include something that could only be said to that person — not the general public.

The luckiest among us have a handful of astute witnesses who are truly therapeutic in this sense. They reliably see us. Recognize them for that gift.

As for me, the “walker” in this case, I’m working on a better internal response to “great start.”

Miles traveled? I’m calling it a slow start.

Everything.

December 28, 2020 · By Amy Swift Crosby

Everything Cacti

I like to look back before I leap forward – although no one could be blamed for sprinting away from the talons of 2020. But, as this year comes to a close, I’ve tried to find a way to organize a tangle of asynchronous reflections.

I knew the process wouldn’t be neat, nor would my conclusion have a bow. Still, I searched for the essence of this unforgettable swath of time; A way to put the file …not so much away, but in the cabinet. Maybe you have, too.
 
What I found is that in a year like no other, opposing sets of circumstances always seemed to be uncannily, at times disturbingly, within arms-reach – even minutes reach – of each other. And while we were united by shared assaults against life as we knew it, our individual experiences within the bounds of these calamities varied so widely.
 
In some lives, things were “unprecedented,” changing daily and generally stressful. But they were survivable. Parents toggled between repetitive meal prep, academics they’d long forgotten and attempts at meaningful work. Families had little privacy, relentless proximity. Sinks were full of dishes, and strangely both uncertainty – and predictability – were a constant.
 
In others, disease, outrage and mother nature devastated towns and families. Politics tore through others. Homes and incomes disappeared. Businesses evaporated. And, in too many cases, loved ones never came home.
 
We sought ways to treat our fragility and anxiety.
 
We weren’t sensitive enough.
We were so sensitive.
Sometimes we were “blessed.”
Sometimes we were everyone else.
 
And of course, people faced the usual crises and curveballs that had nothing to do with any of this. Because contrast – light and dark, grief and joy – are always neighbors, whether visible or not.
 
So, it’s not a revelation that we exist in a state of vulnerability, in all our days, mitigated by moments of super-human strength, effective distraction and a false (but convincing) sense of impermeability.
 
But there was something else: There was good news in 2020, which (for some reason) is very hard to say or even to write.
 
Amidst all of the wreckage, there was still magic to be found. Miracles, even. As a message-maker, it’s possible that I have a hyper-awareness of the words and subtext of culture and zeitgeist – and maybe a sensitivity to how the copy gets crafted, all things considered (which they always have to be, in my world.)
 
But…
 
Celebrating anything almost seemed worse than unsympathetic, it felt hedonistic. There were times in my own life, and still are, where I might normally share some sacred or worthy moment with my small corner of the world, but it has felt trite. I’ve had reluctance to fully enjoy or rejoice, even privately, in the midst of so many who have lost something they couldn’t get back.
 
Unrelated personal struggles, or even victories, can feel so irrelevant in the context of all else. It has even been hard to mourn legitimate but non-threatening elements to life like serendipity and chance encounters, when lives and livelihoods have been decimated.
 
Messages across social media urged gratitude – in various ways and at different volumes. This isn’t an unexpected (or disingenuous) reaction – it’s often where we go in the ruins. And I did find thanks easily, and daily.
 
Yet in 2020, some of those messages of blessedness bordered on sanctimonious, as though some of us were chosen for a lesser nightmare, while others were left to suffer more profoundly. There was a certain packaging that bothered me – a need for something positive to come from a variety of difficult, painful, inexplicable situations.
 
A few years ago, after the attacks in a Paris nightclub, I published a piece called Dualite, with much the same sentiment. The tragedy in Newtown, CT, had a similar agony. As humans, we must function in our roles and vocations, with our own hopes and dramas, while living in the presence of the irreconcilable. Nothing good, at all, comes of some events.
 
I’ve struggled to acknowledge and feel all of this; and also wondered where I haven’t acknowledged enough.
 
Have you experienced this sensation I’m trying to identify?
Is it a cautiousness in vocalizing (or demonstrating?) happiness… because your mind and heart feel a responsibility to shoulder some of the collective weight? For me, it’s a sense that if I fully give in to pleasure, it robs someone, somewhere, of some effort to help carry their more burdensome load. Instead of nourishment, I’ve felt it as a withdrawal. 
 
Metaphysically, this has no basis. Literally it might not either. But it has been my feeling.
 
I don’t have a tidy answer (not sure there should be, actually.)
But here’s what’s clear.
 
If we got the gift of nothingness, we were lucky.
If we weren’t in a hurry, we were lucky.
If we didn’t have to show up to active duty in one of the handful of wars waged this year, we were lucky.
If we gained time… with ourselves, with our home-mates, with friends in need of connection, we were lucky.
 
I asked myself a question at one point, which was: In the face of all that is wrong, unjust, inhumane, unfair, disheartening, dishonest, disproportionate… how can I keep my own life moving forward, doing valuable things, in service, even if those projects aren’t directly tied to survival? I resolved that advancing personal or professional missions has never implied an ignorance or disassociation from the gravest, most urgent of matters in our orbit. As long as action is also taken where it counts.
 
And.
Anger or sadness can’t be the only legitimate feelings.
Nor is obliviousness an option, as it cheats us of an opportunity to feel the experience of others who aren’t like us.
 
So, maybe the practice is assimilation, versus compartmentalization; holding the brutal, and the beautiful, without the need to make immediate sense of either. This is always the truth of life, not just these past nine months.
 
We can find real silver linings, it’s true. I’m not denying that there are some. But I think we often extract them as a public relations tactic – an escape hatch to avoid (said plainly), really hard feelings. It’s natural to want to turn lemons into lemonade – to shove 2020 into the vault and throw away the key. It’s the way we finish the long sentence that was this year.
 
But we went through something, and we went through it alone and together.
People will come out with scars.
Some will walk, breathe and exist differently for a very long time.
We aren’t going back… to anything. No such thing.

Our work is beginning, not ending.

Instead of renouncing 2020  – or allowing it to be relegated to a meme or idiomatic expression – could we recognize this year without resolving to learn a lesson? Could we walk with our experiences and not away from them?  

It can’t become the year that wasn’t.
It was so much.

Here’s to everything, in 2021.

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About Me

photo of Amy Swift Crosby

I’m a brand strategist and copy writer. I mostly work with partner agencies or directly with the leadership or founding team at a brand. My primary mission is to connect design and messaging solutions to business missions. I work with start-ups and Fortune 500 companies, across beauty, hospitality, wellness/fitness, CPG and retail. This blog reflects my personal writing and explores our humanity – often as it relates to work, space, time and language. You can review my portfolio here or connect with me here.

Photo - Andrew Stiles

The Brandsmiths Podcast



Brand Strategists Hilary Laffer and Amy Swift Crosby tackle business questions with candid, (mostly) serious and definitely unscripted workshopping sessions. Guests – from small business owners to CEOs, executive directors and founders – bring their head-scratchers, hunches and conundrums to Hilary, the owner of a boutique creative agency in Los Angeles, and Amy, a copy writer.

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