mid-career blues

It’s ridiculous that I am not a senior editor. Absolutely ridiculous. A shame on my employer, in fact. Look at this picture. Here I am with my three-year-old. On the banks of Beas river somewhere in the Kullu valley. There I am in a t-shirt and khakis, my legs in the water, holding my kid who’s visibly excited standing on this island of a rock. Look at my graying uncombed hair, salty stubbles and moustache, my misshapen glasses. Cool and casual, my carefully maintained carelessness all too visible. See my half smile and my gleaming eyes — they really clinch the deal. How can I be a junior editor? Don’t I look the same to my editor? Can’t he see all this, the spark, the coolness, the confidence….

Confidence? Well, don’t I look confident, at least in this picture? Perhaps I don’t when I’m at work, or in a meeting. But then I don’t feel the same in an official meeting as I do when I’m having fun with my kid. At work, I am more often all at sea, never on the banks of a pleasant river.

But that doesn’t stop me from looking like an editor, at least when I’m vacationing. Ok, I’m not the best hand they have—am not fast and I’m not very sharp, my reading is not good enough to add value to my work, my design sense can prove disastrous and I’m not the most likable guy around—but I have my stuff to put on the table. I can think out-of-the-box, like picking an editor, or for that matter a writer or even a pilot, by just looking at their photographs. What say you, Mr. CEO?