This Thing I Did

I did this thing. It was for Art+Copy Club of Kansas City (AAFKC).

I can't watch it. Because watching yourself in a video is like being able to hear yourself when you're talking to someone on the phone and the reception is bad, only worse. ("Is that what I sound like?!" PLUS "Is that what I look like?!")

Anyway, I thought I'd share because I have this weird competitive issue where I think it will matter how many views it gets (it won't). And for those of you who read this blog despite having never met me (what's wrong with you?), now you have a better idea of what I'm like in-person...awkward.


Art+Copy Presents BULLETPROOF 2011 // Quinn Katherman from AAF - Kansas City on Vimeo.

Emotional Response

So I bought some new deodorant. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed the little sticker on the cap that read, “Extra Responsive in Emotional Moments.” After several days of wear I was about to throw it out because the constant smell of Powder Fresh armpits was making me nauseous. I realized that even the slightest emotional reaction caused it to activate and flood my nostrils with a scent strong enough to taste. It felt like my deodorant was antagonizing me—with every whiff I heard it say, “Stop being such an emotional woman!” I’m not a sweaty person; however, I am a passionate (“emotional,” whatever…) person, which apparently means I need a deodorant that will turn on whenever I have a feeling that’s slightly complicated.

Why do I need a deodorant that responds to my emotions in the first place? Emotions don’t make me sweat, sitting in a 100-degree conference room to watch a PowerPoint about consumer behavior makes me sweat, attempting to run a mile with my spastic dog makes me sweat, trying on clothes at Forever 21 makes me sweat. I’m sure there’s some kind of scientific validity behind creating emotionally responsive deodorant, but when it’s positioned next to the men’s deodorant, which all have stickers on the cap that say, “Protects Men Who Take Risks,” I have to stop, throw my breasts over my shoulder and put up my feminist fighting fists. Being a woman doesn’t make me emotional. Being a person who comes from a long line of emotional people and lives a busy, sort of stressful life makes me an emotional person. But men don’t need deodorant that responds to their emotions because the only thing that makes them sweat is heavy-lifting and all the manly activities they engage in, apparently. To suggest that women are the only ones who need protection from the physical reaction her body has to emotions is to suggest that we are the only ones who feel, and if we are the only ones who feel then why in the hell haven’t we conquered the world and made men obsolete?

Fine, I'll admit that sometimes I overreact in situations and that makes me seem “emotional,” I guess. But it’s usually after someone says one of my three crazy triggers:

1. “Stop overreacting!”
2. “Calm down!”
3. “Relax!”

Now my deodorant has become my fourth crazy trigger because every time I get another heavy whiff of Powder Fresh armpits, I get defensive and emotional over the fact that it thinks I’m being emotional. I feel like screaming, “You don’t know me! You don’t know how I feel! You’re just another thing I do to disguise my real smell that maybe also gives me cancer later in life! So stop pretending to be smart because you’re NOT!”

And after typing that, all I can smell is Powder Fresh armpits...again.

Big News

I got a new job. Please, please—hold your applause until the end.

It all happened so fast. One minute I’m sitting alone in a tiny office, writing fart jokes for greeting cards and—BOOM!—the next thing I know I’m in a fancy downtown agency that has a ping pong table, beer on tap and awards lining the walls, trying to write copy for a major fast-food joint. I wasn’t looking for a new job but this just kind of fell into my lap—I know, I hate people who have that kind of luck too. But remember, it was only a mere 18 months ago when I was drowning in the despair of unemployment, thinking I would never find a writing job and then, just when I was about to give up and start cleaning rich people’s toilets, I found a great job which has since led me to another great job. I’m not going to say anything about the power of a positive attitude or about how the economy is getting better because optimism makes me feel dirty, but I will say that perseverance in the face of total shit does pay off. If it weren’t for this blog and my Twitter addiction, I wouldn’t have gotten this new job. That being said, I still can’t believe there are people out there who are willing to pay me to put words on paper.

I started my new job about six weeks ago and so far I love it. Although I wouldn’t have admitted this a few months ago, I missed the hustle and bustle of the ad world. I missed stressing out about other people’s problems. I missed having to work late because I was needed. I missed powering through a ten-hour workday on three hours of sleep. I missed being challenged and pushed to my limit. I know, I’m a total masochist.

Although I worked in advertising before my stint as a greeting card writer, I never worked in the creative department. Creative departments at advertising agencies are like beehives, we’re all responsible for our own pollinating; yet we’re all dependent on a queen. The queen bee is mostly the client, but can also be a creative director, an account manager, the economy, anything—the point is, even though we have the freedom to fly wherever we want, buzzing and stinging shit, our survival is contingent on a much larger entity, which provides us with the work to do. And if the queen bee dies, the beehive has only a short window of time to replace her before the entire hive is compromised and all of the worker bees die. So, uh...long live the queen! I guess?

Despite my uncanny ability to put people off by acting like a total ass, everyone I’ve met has been extremely nice and welcoming. I get the feeling that my coworkers are trying really hard to not seem too stressed out or pissed off around me, which is adorable and flattering. Apparently I started at a really busy time because at least once a day someone tells me, “I promise, it’s not usually like this.” I haven’t told anyone how much I enjoy being a busy bee. I just smile and nod a lot because 90 percent of the time I have no idea what the hell I’m doing, which makes everyday an exercise in not looking like a total idiot. For instance, it was my second or third day when an email came through regarding a project for a client.

“Can you do a download at 10:30 this morning?” it said.

I sat at my desk, reading and rereading the email. What download? Am I supposed to download something? Am I supposed to download myself? Can you do that now? There was no attachment to the email, no instructions, so I just replied, “Sure,” hoping more information would come to me as a result. I waited 30 minutes and there was no response. It was 10:15. I was running out of time to figure out this whole download thing, so I decided to consult a nearby coworker.

“Hey, uh, Sarah? Can you tell me what this means?” I gestured towards my computer screen as if it was full of hieroglyphics I needed to interpret.

“Sure. What’s up?” she said, rolling her chair over to my desk.

“So, I got this email and it says I need to do a download but it doesn’t say anything about what the download is, where I get it, how I get it, and I’m apparently supposed to do this by 10:30,” I said, trying to disguise the panic in my voice.

“What?” Sarah leaned in to read the email. “Oh! No, no, not like a computer download. It means they’re going to download you on a project, like, they’re going to tell you about it. It’s like a verbal creative brief." My insides turned to stone and I cringed.

“Oh, I see. Well, I feel stupid now.”

“Don’t. It’s industry lingo. You’ll get a hang of it,” she said and rolled back to her desk like it was no big deal I had just spent the last 45 minutes trying to figure out how download some mysterious file for a meeting.

“Cool. I get it, yeah…well, I’m going to go get downloaded now…I’m going to get the down-low, the DL, the—”

“It’s just download, nothing else,” she said.

“Right, I was just—yeah, cool, never mind…okay, I’m going to do that.”

Since then I’ve said and done countless other dumb things. I don’t know enough yet to know how dumb I seem, but that’s what learning is, right? You throw yourself into the unknown, try to fake your way through it until you get a hang of things and then you look back and squirm with embarrassment every time you think of what you were before you became what you are now. It’s hard. It’s tough. It’s stressful. It’s everything I ever wanted, for now.

"Booty Pop"

New inventions are happening everyday. This is something I benefited from until I woke up old one day. Now, every new invention feels like another thing to learn, another thing to spend money on and another thing that’s just a few years too late. Once you graduate from the limelight of the 18- to 24-year-old demographic and you’re no longer the apple of every retailer’s eye, you fall into the grey, ambivalent area of 25- to 34-year-olds and new products don’t really appeal to anything other than your bitterness. So when I came across Booty Pop, I assumed my reaction was like many other 25- to 34-year-olds: Seriously? WTF!



According to the commercial, Booty Pop will give you a “sexier, more desirable booty instantly,” and it’s just like a “padded bra for your butt!” Every claim made my heart sink deeper into my protruding gut. As a curvy female who is proud to have something to shake, even if it is her upper arm, I feel conflicted. Is this a sign that society has finally become accepting of women with curves, with imitation (or simulation) being the most sincere form of flattery? Or is this just another way for skinny girls to get ahead, by perpetuating an unrealistic body type? I settled on the latter because in a society where Kim Kardashian can be famous for more than 15 minutes because she has an ass big enough to have its own zip code, Booty Pop is anything butt a step in the right direction for women and body image.

As the commercial says, “Booty Pop turns a droopy derriere into a youthful looking, head turning, bootylicious booty,” it cuts to scenes of men checking out women’s asses in inappropriate settings because, how else would you know you look hot? No one seems to care about how all these newly bootyfied women are going to be wearing dirty underwear all the time, because, you know, cleanliness is a virtue second only to hotness.

At this point in my life, I see a commercial for something like Booty Pop and the 18- to 24-year-old inside of me giggles while the 25- to 34-year-old inside of me rolls her eyes, swallows a regurgitation of feminist theory, and bitterly reflects on the past. I have spent the last decade overeating in hopes of one day having an ass like JLo, so you can imagine my disappointment when – after nine years of hard work, dedication and a strict diet of doughnuts, McDonald’s, beer and cheese cubes – someone decides to go and invent padded underwear.

So, you know what Booty Pop? You owe me 20 pounds of cellulite.

(And I don't think it's a coincidence that "Booty Pop" is one dangerous typo away from being "Booty Poop.")

Networking: Just Be Yourself...Well, Not Really

Networking? Bring the cheese.

I feel about networking the same way I feel about bowel movements: everyone does it, but that doesn’t mean we need to embarrass ourselves by talking about it.

I get it. A gazillion people have already told me. Networking is important. No, seriously. I get it. If we could all just admit that networking makes us act like complete asshats, then I wouldn’t have such an issue with it. But instead, it’s like a marathon to see who can shake the most hands and collect the most business cards so they can send out a series of emails in the next 24 hours that look like this:

Hi, Important Person at a Company I Want to Work For!

I hope you had a swell time at that mixer last night. The appetizers were really delicious. Anyway, I enjoyed talking your ear off about myself. I recall you saying that you liked my scarf, and I wanted to let you know that it is available at any Target in the metro area (in case you wanted to get one and then we could be scarf buddies!!!). Also, I wanted to make sure you had all of my contact information in the event that a job opens up at your company or somewhere else that’s cooler because my interest in you is really limited to what you can do for me. So with this in mind, I’ve attached my resume which will only solidify your opinion of me as a completely mediocre candidate, and here is my website in case you’d like to see some samples of all the entirely irrelevant work I’ve done.

Thanks again, I hope you have a great day, and if there’s anything you need, please don’t hesitate to contact me to kiss your ass until it falls off.

Sincerely,
Jobless Networking Asshat


Every article I’ve read and every speaker I’ve heard talks about networking being the most vital part of the job search in a down economy. But no one ever tells you that networking involves schmoozing like a used-car salesman. No one ever tells you that you’ll have to feign a knowledge of sailing and pretend to be fascinated by a boat named “Hoosier Daddy” because it belongs to the VP of the company you’ve sent your resume to 85 times. No, the only thing people ever tell you about networking is “be yourself,” but this is not what they really mean because networking is not something you would do if you were to “be yourself.” Am I right?

In the course of my job search, I’ve realized that any time recruiters or job search gurus say, “just be yourself” what they really mean is “just act like you’re being yourself.” How could they really mean “be yourself” when they just gave you a list of acceptable phrases to use in an interview, a list of acceptable 140-character Tweets, and an example of an acceptable Facebook page for you to use as a guideline? And then they tell you something like, “ always appear positive,” to which I always want to say, “appearing positive would really mess with my personal branding message,” because personal branding is a $100 word in the job search world.

The worst part about losing my job wasn’t the loss of financial security, health insurance or daily purpose, it was knowing that I would have to listen to endless amounts of hypocritical job search babble like, “be yourself” and “networking is the key to getting your dream job.” It’s kind of like when your parents talk about things like sex or drugs or the Internet and you suddenly feel like your ears are going to start bleeding.

I’m still in my first trimester of unemployment, but if things keep going the way they are now, and I’m forced to listen to more people talk about the job search, the importance of networking and tell me how to be myself, I am afraid that I might become a robot—kind of like a Stepford Wife only I’d be called Prospective Employee #13,976,345.

The Creative Jealousy That Drives Us

My Green Monster of Jealousy

It’s not that I don’t want other people to do well. It’s not that I am a naturally jealous person (wait, is it?). It’s not that I don’t have my own “thang” going for me. But when you are a Creative, and trying to make a living as one, jealousy seems to rear its ugly-ass head in the dumbest, most debilitating ways.

Just the other day I received an incredibly nice, and somewhat undeserved, message from a fellow writer who said she was jealous of my blog. I had to re-read the message five times before my brain was willing to comprehend what she was saying. This writer, a woman I have always admired and felt jealous of since the day I met her, actually said: “I was depressed all weekend because your blog is so much better than mine.” What?! Come again?

I will hold her message to heart for as long as my insecurities plague me (so pretty much forever), not because it validates my mad skillz, but because it validates the green monster of jealousy that I always thought of as my own private weakness. To realize that the people I envy for their talents and creations are also capable of being jealous of me is like finding out that Starburst sells packages full of only the Pink and Red flavors (oh yeah, I’m totally serious, hit up a QuickTrip near you).

Now I realize that jealousy is not just a disease of the unemployed. Although, since I’ve been unemployed, I have had ample time to peruse the online portfolios of the unemployed ad talent out there right now, and it’s enough to make anyone want to throw their portfolio in the trash and cry in a corner. It makes me wish that we could send all of this unemployed talent to an abandoned island and call it “The Lost Land of Advertising Fame;” there they could probably start a war, or at least convince people to join a war, and maybe win a shiny award for a really great Super Bowl ad. But since this is unrealistic, I am forced to compete with these people who ooze creativity from every pore while I sit around, oozing nothing but sweat, fear and envy. Given these circumstances, putting my rinky-dink portfolio out there feels like wearing a bathing suit made of bacon and then going for a swim in shark-infested waters. At this point, I’d have better luck trying to tap-dance my way into a job.

On a positive note, I have found that this type of jealousy and creative combat can be an excellent source of motivation, and thus I have started another blog, which will serve as my resume/portfolio/bio/pseudo-professional site. You’ll find the link in the side bar, and also right here. It’s not much because I haven’t done much (I mean, geeze people, I’m only 24 years old, which is practically 12…if you divide it by two), but if you have feedback, advice, suggestions, or other projects that will help me beef it up, and create seething jealousy among other ad talent, feel free to drop me a line.

In the meantime, I’m going to put on my big girl pants, which means a slightly nicer pair of sweatpants than those I slept in, and keep on truckin’, because I’m a ninja unicorn, damnit!