For roughly the last 25 years, I have lived in a constant state of trying to have an opinion. I’m not talking about opinions of the “I’m not much for art deco” or “I like this lasagna more than that lasagna” variety.
I’m talking about opinions about politics and culture and, most of all, other opinions. I’m talking about opinions that need to be as original as possible and also adhere to any number of prescribed requirements when it comes to word length, tone, and timeliness. Since my mid-twenties and in publications from Self to the Los Angeles Times to the one you’re reading right now, I have been consigned to produce such pieces on a particular schedule — weekly, biweekly, monthly — regardless of whether I have anything to say at all.
Do you know what it’s like to be forced to say something when you don’t have anything to say? It’s like having the dry heaves. You sit at your computer, desperately typing out words and phrases that, in opinion pieces, commonly precede actual points.
In the age of Trump, this means ___
More and more, we’re seeing an American consciousness that ___
While this may have nothing to do with TK, the fact is that TK is the driving force behind TK.
You feel queasy, but no relief comes. Your body convulses. Your throat clenches. Still, nothing comes out. Meanwhile, the continuum of stress-inducing professional accountability looms over you like an overcrowded shelf poised to topple its contents on your head. If you don’t think of something to say, you won’t finish the piece. If you don’t finish the piece, the piece won’t be published. If the piece isn’t published you don’t get paid. If you don’t get paid, you go broke and your life falls apart.
In other words, if you can’t adhere to a fixed schedule of saying something original in anywhere between 700 and 2,000 words your life will fall apart.
To live this way is to essentially walk around with a maple tap that you’re ready to jab into any person, place, or thing that might provide fodder for material. That acquaintance who happens to be some kind of expert on brain science? You can’t stand him, but when he suggests having lunch you agree in the hopes that he might say something you could parlay into a piece about how the amygdala and anterior context (or something something blah blah blah) play a role in (wait for it…) political tribalism. A new public art installation in your local park? Don’t even think about simply enjoying it (or quietly making fun of it with your friend as you walk by). Instead, you are under orders to use it as an occasion for 1,000-plus words of verbal gymnastics about how the entire concept of public art is inherently paradoxical because it caters to private sensibilities by posing a fundamentally personal question “what is art?” Or whatever.
If none of that works, you have to admit defeat by writing your 40th column on “the culture of narcissism.”
Think all of that sounds tedious? Imagine being the close friend or partner of someone who lives on this treadmill. When your companion isn’t desperately clicking through Twitter and Google News in search of a topic (while also skidding over into Sundance Catalog clearance items or Pinterest boards about wide-plank flooring) she’s refusing to go anywhere or do anything because I told you! I’m on deadline!
Since she is never not on deadline, the only way to get her to leave her desk is to present every activity as a potential topic. Lessons from the My Ex-Husband School of Getting Me to Do Things entail the following role-playing exercises:
Exercise one
Him: You want to go to a movie this weekend?
Me: No! My column is due! I can’t do anything!
Him: You could write about how [insert any movie here] underscores our national mood and is a metaphor for the [insert any psychological phenomenon here] that seems to be dominating the current zeitgeist.
Me: Okay, I’ll go.
Exercise two
Him: We should really try to take a vacation sometime.
Me: No! I’d have to write a bunch of columns ahead of time, and then they’d be out of date and stale by the time they ran.
Him: But all the historical sites, museums, and visits to remote villages in developing countries would give you tons of material. The columns would write themselves.
Me: Okay, I’ll go.
Exercise three
Him: You are incapable of relaxing. We can’t even go on vacation without you working all the time. I want a divorce.
Me: Interesting take. Let me write that down.