The Non-Communicating Communicator
How I Worked for a Full Year in a Company and Never Spoke to Anyone There
People can be weird as hell, and I am proud to say I am people too.
Everyone who has known me for 30 minutes knows at least two things about me:
- I worked as a digital marketer for an agricultural tech company for one year.
- I love Leonard Cohen.
For the entire duration of my pilgrimage in the land of tractors and seeders, I couldn’t speak to anyone in that company — except, well, my manager and the designer. It’s highly debatable how much I actually communicated with them too.
Mind you, I am the kind of person who won’t shut up. I talk a lot, I blatantly interrupt people (sorry, I am actively trying to keep this under control), and I can turn pretty much every situation into a joke (sorry about that too).
If anyone who had known me at work before the tractor company had seen me there, they’d be absolutely certain I was abducted by aliens and replaced by some weird copy made in China.
If anyone at the tractor company knew me before and after it, they’d think, again, that I was a completely different person.
I was virtually voiceless. I came to work every day, shuffled through people to get to my office, whispering a lost “good morning” in the process, and then hid away in my office, trying to make sense of an industry that was (and I’m afraid still is) an enigma to me.
I left work every day, shuffled through people, muttered some sort of “goodbye”, got in a car with three other people, shut down entirely for 20 minutes until we got back to the city, and then went home.
The next day, the same thing happened all over again.
The same thing over and over again, for an entire year.
I was sent to the middle of the Southern Romanian fields and took photos of tractors in action.
Did not say a word.
I was sent to Germany at a press conference.
Did not say a word.
I was a communicator who could not communicate.
Every time I bumped into people, I felt my heart beating, my breath stopping for a break, and my mind going into mush.
Every day, for one whole year.
Anxiety Can Be a Real Bitch
I’ve never been the kind of person who can make instant connections to everyone. I’ve never been an actual introvert either (people who work with me are probably tired of how much I speak about all the nonsense in the world).
I’m pretty much an open book. Ask me anything. Ask me about childhood trauma, ask me about what I ate yesterday, ask me whatever you want. I’ll answer, I’ll be honest, and I’ll probably cry somewhere along the way too (not before I make two very awkward jokes about s*** that’s pretty serious if you look into it).
I have always been anxious, however, and the older I get, the more anxious I am. For example, I am currently about five months away from turning 30, and that makes me terribly anxious. I am also anxious about the Coronavirus thing. And sometimes, I am so anxious I can barely breathe or think.
I’m sometimes scared of people, especially when I don’t know them and when I don’t know how much of my real self I can reveal to them. I think it’s a pretty weird sight for them because I happen to also be horrible at hiding my real quirky and weird self, so watching me try is probably odd.
Even with all this, I have never spent twelve whole months hiding away from people as much as I did when I worked there.
Why?
Because I was so afraid of being judged — for being young, for being completely off when it came to everything in that industry, for saying the wrong thing and liking the movies “kids these days like”.
I was terrified of being ridiculed for being weird, unknowing, and pretty much for being me.
In the process, I think I was sending off the completely wrong signals. A communicator has to be communicative, right? And I wasn’t, so what in the world I was doing there anyway?
I was being socially anxious to an extent where asking any kind of question was a torment, where asking someone to help me with something was Hell, and where I was sinking into myself with every silent day that went by.
Lessons Learned
I have spoken before about the amazing things I’ve learned while working in the agro-tech industry. Two years later, I still think it’s one of the best things that could’ve happened to me, long-term.
I have plenty of great things to say about the experience. Aside from the professional lessons I have already talked about, this job:
- Offered me perspective
- Helped me move out of a rut
- Opened my eyes to the world
- Offered me the opportunity to see the great town of Bad Worishofen
- Allowed me to interact with a different industry
- Showed me the true meaning of communication beyond the specificities of traditional vs. digital channels
- Brought me closer to a person I hold very dearly to my heart
- Offered me enough time to work on stuff that helped me fill in some professional knowledge gaps
- Opened my heart to understanding that there is life after digital (and it’s colorful and pretty and filled with real pros)
Short-term, I was miserable, and it had nothing to do with everyone else, but to how I was shutting myself down.
The biggest, most relevant lesson?
Be authentic. Be true to yourself.
It’s the kind of s*** you always see people sharing on Facebook and in motivational self-help books.
But it’s also the kind of s*** that, when truly internalized, can save your mental health.
There is only one thing in the world you can ever do very, very, very well. It’s the only thing you were actually born to be: yourself. Be yourself with your scars and your quirks and your size and your pimples.
Everything else? You will stumble and fall and be real damn crazy about it. But eventually, you will come back again, one way or another, and you’ll be happy s*** happened to you because it will have taught you something. Spoke about this too, here and here.
Failing yourself by not allowing yourself to be yourself?
That’s dark, man.
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