Your Work Is Not Your Worth
Tags: Babies, Health, Life, Self, Coronavirus

Your Work Is Not Your Worth

Zlatovic Vickovic

I used to be fancy. A bold-faced title, a six-figure salary, and a Brooklyn prewar brownstone. Business cards that would drive Patrick Bateman to wield a chainsaw down five flights of stairs. Ink still wet on equity partnership papers. I had a towering inferno of pretty finery. Supple kidskin leather handbags imported from Italy and London, stacks of handknit sweaters, sapphire glitter heels that cost more than monthly mortgage payments — pristine and unworn because I liked the look of all my pretty, expensive things but rarely handled them. All because I had a job, a career, a title, and a paycheck that was slowly killing me.

No one tells you about the weight you gain because you’re chained to your desk working on a deck into the late evening, cozying up to SeamlessWeb. You wake and sleep to the hum of fluorescent lights. You type type type while kind women empty your trash. You cry in bathroom stalls. When you have to fire people, you’re trained to parrot, “It’s a business decision.” Even when the person’s — whose life you’ve temporarily ruined — hands quake. Your boss tells you it gets easier, and you suspect he’s a sociopath because it never gets easier.

But no matter. Your co-workers click click click and this gets you thinking that it’s been months since you’ve seen daylight. No tells you about the time you lose. No one tells you maybe this job isn’t worth it because of what you’re forced to give.

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Hold on, now. What’s with the war metaphors? This is life, not a battlefield.

I grew up poor and believe me when I say there’s no romance in subsisting on a bag of potatoes for an entire summer. To have to kiss for knishes. To sit in the dark because Con Ed cut the lights again. To working a hot plate when the gas turns off. To shouting at your friends’ windows from the street because luxury is a dial tone. To do quick math in your head before you hit the register because no one wants the shame in having to decide what to put back.

On television, people used to preach money never made you happy. Well, those motherfuckers have never been poor. From the womb, my mother warned me about the other kids on the block. Get good grades, go to college, get a job, make money, buy a house, get married, have a kid, maybe two, but don’t overdo it because kids suck the light and life right out of you — no offense — and keep making money until they spatula dirt on your face and drop you deep underground. That’s the life you need, my mother said. Not this nonsense, she said, gesturing to the kids on the stoop.

For the first three and a half decades of my life, I believed money solved everything. Money kept the lights on, filled fridges with food, and made sure you had somewhere to lay your head. What I didn’t realize was that there was a difference between the kind of money that sustained you and the kind that consumed you. I only knew the binaries of want but there were subtle gradations.

Nearing midlife, I was confused. I did nearly everything I was reared to do. I got the degrees. I got the job. I had a fancy apartment in Park Slope. I made the money. I was no longer the child hocking our belongings on 13th Avenue. I was no longer the kid stealing money for food. I had all the things, yet I was sick, exhausted, and miserable.

When you’re crushing it, killing it, destroying it, no one tells you about the misery. No one tells you maybe this isn’t what you need or want.

Seven years ago, I was crying in my boss’s office. Back then, I had two—the company president and the CEO—and the two men couldn’t be more different. You should know this was some serious business because I was not a crier. When I got hit by a car when I was 10, I didn’t cry. I laid on the ground and said my shoulder hurt. By the time I was 30, I could count on two hands the number of times I cried.

But here I was sobbing in front of one boss (the president) complaining about the other (the CEO). The man who set my teeth on edge. A man who I had begun to hate, but a man who was also signing my paychecks. My boss was a man who had no problem working me to the bone so he could earn even fatter paychecks while he constantly reminded me that I was insignificant, small. He would forever overshadow my shine and savor my sorrow. And while I made his companies millions, while I had paperwork to prove that I was an equity owner, while everyone around me could see how sick I was from all the stress — he always wanted more. More money, more hours, more work until I had nothing left to give.

Who quits their job when they’re making a fuck-ton of money?

People, I sobbed through my sweater when my boss asked if I was happy. He said the words quietly and slowly. “Felicia, are you happy?”

What do you mean, happy? Define happiness, I said. And he smiled and repeated the question until I shook my head and said no. No, I was most definitely not happy.

Then quit, he said. He might as well have said, well, just walk into X’s office, chop off his head, and put it on a stick. Because who quits their job? I was of the generation that told people to deal with it. Specifically, who quits their job when they’re making a fuck-ton of money?

“People who aren’t happy. People like you who have the luxury of finding another job,” my boss said.

A week later, I quit.

That year, something odd happened. I could’ve easily gone to another agency — my reputation was gold. I scored interviews at companies you’ve definitely heard of. But I did something that, back then, I would’ve considered out of character for me. Instead of negotiating compensation and benefits, I asked about the company’s culture and character, what they valued. Did they have values? Did they have integrity? Did they treat their employees more than just line items on a P&L?

One recruiter laughed and said, you’ve basically alienated 90% of New York.

Over pancakes, a former colleague who was much younger and smarter told me to make my own rules. If what I value is integrity and respect, why not build my own business rooted in those values instead of trying to find them in other companies? Create instead of settle. I had the luxury and privilege of doing it, and so I did.

I’m 44, and only last year did I realize, really realize, that my work is not tied to my worth.

If I’m being completely honest, the journey was the hardest of my career. I was no longer tethered to a title. I didn’t have the security of being affiliated with a company and brands people know. And I most certainly did not have the paycheck and health benefits I once took for granted. Here I was watching people who reported to me crushing it, killing it, destroying it, and while I was proud of them because they deserved it, I also felt small.

I’m 44, and only last year did I realize, really realize, that my work is not tied to my worth. My work is what I do to make a living, but it’s not my character or the whole of who I am. It’s not the relationships I cultivate or the people I love and respect. It’s simply what I do.

I had my war, can I now have peace?

Don’t get me wrong, my work challenges me because I’m a persistent, curious student. My work lights me up because I get to choose the people with whom I work. I’ve designed a business rooted in values of respect, transparency, integrity, and collaboration. I have firm boundaries, and I’m finally protective of my time. Clients know that — unless they’re lying bloody in the street — I’m not available after business hours and on the weekends. Friends know that I’m not answering their calls and texts in the morning because that’s the time when I’m in flow — I’m doing research, I’m thinking through a brand’s positioning, and I’m building their platform.

And with that came other changes: I realized that true wealth is about fulfilling your basic needs and a little more for extras. Meaningful wealth is about having time to spend with the people who matter most. It’s about realizing that you are not your title, your job, your paycheck — you are more beautiful and complicated than a job description.

You are more than what you do. You are infinite. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, you are large. You contain multitudes.

You don’t have to be roaring and conquering to be successful. There are nobility and honor in living a quiet life that flies below the radar. I don’t need “big names.” I want to work with decent, honest people. I don’t need “big money” because I know how much it could ruin you. I don’t need things because things will never fill you if your wants are bottomless.

And I don’t need that fancy life because I had it. Goodbye, and thank you very much, but I’m off living my one great, sweeping, magical, crazy life, and I don’t plan on revisiting the wreckage.