Writers, what was your best day at work?
September 09, 2010
Itโs an old saw on the golf course: โYour worst day golfing is better than your best day working.โ
For me thatโs never been true. My worst days golfing are bad, because I feel like Iโm wasting my time, and my best days working are fantastic, because I feel at one with the universe.
But how many truly magical days have I spent working? In my experience, such days happen about once per decade.
Itโs November 1995, and Iโm lying on the sofa in Larry Raganโs office at 3:00 a.m., trying to grab a few hours sleep before the graphic designer comes in to lay out the memorial issue Iโve been working on in the days since he died. Iโm using all the skills my mentor taught me in order to honor him. As I try to sleep through the coffee buzz, I think of the line in a James Taylor song, โNo one can tell me that Iโm doing wrong today.โ
On a wintry day in 2002, Iโm riding in a rusty GMC Jimmy with a struggling stand-up comic Iโm profiling for the Chicago Tribuneโs Sunday Magazine. Weโre headed for a two-night gig at a Holiday Inn in Eau Clair, Wis. Iโm inhaling the fumes from his Nicorette gum, asking him how he prepares beef stroganoff on a hot plate, and thinking to myself that my competition is exactly no one, because Iโm the only asshole in the world who thinks this is heaven.
In spring of this year, Iโm holding my first โspeechwriting jam sessionโ at a speechwriters conference in Phoenix. Iโm playing great speeches and watching the eyes of the writers in the audience fill, as my own eyes fill, as I remember my dead writer dad, who agreed with all of us that communication and love are the same thing.
What was your best moment at work? Communicate it to us here, and now.