PERSONAL ESSAY | MEMOIR
Livin’ La Vida Lorem Ipsum
When Does Meaning Really Matter?
Once upon a time, I worked as a copywriter. My job consisted of creating blatantly emotional language to manipulate people into spending money on something I had little to no belief in. So, lying, more or less.
I was a bit startled the first time a co-worker (a graphic designer) approached me with a visual they’d created and a request, but I quickly learned it was the norm.
“I need this much copy,” they’d say, configuring their fingers into some measure of space, anywhere from the size of a postage stamp to a dollar bill.
At first, I responded with a question that baffled them.
“How many words do you need?”
Soon I learned they had no conception of how many words — much less how many characters — they needed to fill the space they wanted to be filled with words. Any words. They didn’t care. They often didn’t read them anyway.
At the time, it seemed to me a blatant disrespect of language, and thus of meaning itself.
As an autistic person who has experienced life (at least the part of life that wasn’t excruciatingly painful) through the written word, I found this troubling.
But then again, I used to find a lot of things troubling. I let more things slide now than I used to. I have to for my well-being.
A Dream Deferred
I didn’t go to college to be a copywriter.
If I’m honest, I went to school (lots and lots of school) to indulge my love affair with the English language. Many of my happiest hours have been spent in a classroom, or in the office of a venerated professor, digging deep into the words of beloved authors, sussing out meaning that perhaps the authors themselves never intended.
Those are the moments when I felt the flow of life around me more than any other time before or since. Those glorious hours when meaning and connection shimmered around me, the very air iridescent and nuanced with the ideas that streamed past.
How could any job ever compare to those halcyon days?
Pain Itself
“At least I’m getting paid to write.”
That’s what I told myself as I penned empty soliloquies for products and services that struck me as useless wastes of time and money.
Meanwhile, my soul was dying. Was this it? Was writing stupid copy for idiotic products my destiny? My depression and resentment were calcifying into a lifestyle, complete with a bottle-a-day wine habit.
It wasn’t long into my copywriting career that I encountered Lorem Ipsum.
When designers didn’t approach me with the size of the area they wanted filled with words (“3 square inches of text about how great this product you’ve never used or even seen is, please”), they’d give me a graphic with Lorem Ipsum text.
If you don’t know (I didn’t), Lorem Ipsum is a sort of placeholder Latin-esque text. Its meaning/meaninglessness depends on who you ask, apparently — within a single article, the author contradicts herself as to whether the passage is derived from a speech by Cicero or is gibberish.
But I digress.
Language is slippery and so, increasingly, is meaning. I think that’s been one of my main troubles in this mortal coil.
Finding my own meaning
I’ve written extensively about my mental health…what should I term them…battles? Struggles? Agonies? All of the above?
Perhaps more importantly, I’ve written about my recovery, which I both deem to be and credit to the huge magic in my life.
There came a point when I knew that spending one-third of my life doing something that felt gross would have to end, even if I was good at it and made decent money.
But ultimately, I didn’t make the leap away from copywriting on my own. I took a moral stand at work that resulted in me being fired — it was one of many times in my life when I’ve watched in horror as the goddess of destruction burned bridges even as I walked across them, scorching my feet while forcing me onto the path meant for my soul, the very one I’d avoided out of fear.
In the aftermath of my firing, I was diagnosed as autistic. It’s been one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. My diagnosis has given me a different viewpoint — but no, that’s not quite right — it’s given me permission to embrace my natural viewpoint, different as it may be from that of most others.
Since my diagnosis, I’ve accepted myself in a way I never had before — and that’s on me. The deeper I get into my spirituality, the more I understand that the very things I loathed in others are the things I’ve loathed in myself. Turns out I bullied myself as much as the world bullied me. And vice versa. The moral of the story is that it shouldn’t take a diagnosis for anyone to be loved, most of all by herself.
Becoming the Mystic Autistic
It’s been close to two years since I was fired. In that time I’ve made realizations about myself and life in general that have changed me profoundly.
In fully embracing myself, I’ve come out of the closet with my own deeply personal spiritual practice. In allowing it, rather than anything outside of myself, to become my true north, I’ve found meaning even beyond my beloved words.
I know now that my soul’s purpose, my dharma, is to help my fellow misfits (be they neurospicy or otherwise) find the kind of true, deep happiness I’ve found.
I’m not a copywriter anymore, and there’s no longer any need to fill up space in my life with Lorem Ipsum text. But it also troubles me much less now when other people want to.
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