Bohemian Crip And The Puzzle Of Professional Boundaries...

 

This week, after a sloppy round of the dozens—I’m still learning, it’s kind of a funny story, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel right about posting it. Anyway, this guy started to, well, tell on me. He wanted to get me in trouble with my sort-of boss and make me lose my sort-of job because “My personal and professional boundaries are messed up.”(Honestly?  I’m the only person on Earth who could get cancelled and come out ahead financially. Because it’s a volunteer job with a lot of donations, and I posted stuff about Bernie’s whereabouts over Christmas Eve last year, because without a patriarch around, we don’t have much need to stand on ceremony  at times like that.) But they love me there because the former social media director said “I can go on vacation and know I don’t have to worry about the pages.”

Thinking about it over days, though. He had a point.  Not that my joke about this mope’s mom’s Linked-in profile wasn’t a funny addition to an urban tradition—I’ll stand by that, as it were, although in situations that matter more? I should watch out for my current tendency to show off and get the laugh no matter what, even if it does seem like a personal step up from the pleaser stuff I would do in my grade-grubbing days. (That girl is not coming back, even if I do end up, this late in the game, in a situation where I’m Ms. J and have to button up and all that. Life does not give out A+’s and it took me way too long to let that sink in.)

Rather than *bad* professional boundaries, though, it’s more like *what* professional boundaries? I’ve mostly been in situations where the strongest asset I bring to any table is my personal story and my ability to convey it in terms that are relatable to people that don’t share it. Making people feel those things is something that I’m fairly good at, though I tried not to be, and not only cause it’s hell on…whatever’s the public relations/journalistic version of “Clinical detachment”.(objectivity, perhaps…not sure) I didn’t want to be good at it though for the same reason I wanted to think my body looked different when I sat in an ordinary chair. My body is often part of my job, which I do just feet from where I toss and turn in frustration some nights…not a lot of places for the Sorkin walk-and-talks, or let’s face it, at the level I’d end up in, clashes with Milton cause I borrowed his swingline stapler.

I’d tell his mother on him, too, but really? I think she’s suffered enough.