Stupid writing exercise o’ the day: write your own eulogy
Gawd, I hate writing exercises that have you write your own eulogy.
Such a cliche, and in any case, isn’t it all so much blowing smoke up your own butt?
Also, doesn’t it depend who’s supposedly writing the eulogy?
“Write it as if it was your boss.”
Which boss? My current boss? That would probably be fairly nice with the usual blah blah blah about hard working and detail oriented, but while she’s a nice lady, she doesn’t really know me, unless she’s done some Googling I don’t know about. She gets the kinder gentler mask, she doesn’t see me screaming very non-PC expletives when I’m stuck behind a slow driver.
One of my old music biz bosses? “Pyra has a shitty attitude. Like, this one time she wouldn’t even come with us to the titty bar, and she was completely useless when it comes to rolling joints.” Or “Pyra has a shitty attitude. She got offended and quit when I screamed at her that she was utterly insolent for pointing out that I don’t know how SEO and branding works.”
One of the self-righteous SJW twats from college radio? “Pyra has a shitty attitude, she quit doing her radio show when I tried to tell her what to think and say on mic. I think she might even be one of those right wing Nazis who don’t believe in the sanctity of 100% taxation rates.”
Or they say “write it as if it was one of your coworkers.” Again, this varies wildly with some of my coworkers having a much better idea of who I am than others.
Or “write it as though it was one of your clients.” No thank you, clients are the tool of Satan. This is why I seek to stick to customer-based business models. Or fan-based.
“Write it as though it was one of your friends.” An actual friend or just one of the many people who thinks I’m their friend? Now, some of the latter are nice enough people, but I see them once every 8 months at a show long enough to exchange pleasantries and move on.
Ditto much of my family, actually.
People get little slivers depending on the nature of the relationship, and those slivers then get filtered through the lens of what that person wanted to get out of me and whether I gave it or not.
The friend whose company I prize thinks I’m generous and always willing to lend a hand or an afternoon. The parasite who wants to monopolize my time for his own gain thinks I’m a flake who never answers my phone and always has something else I gotta do when he expects me to produce for him.
Which one is right? Both. And neither. And if it was actually my eulogy, none of it would matter anyway.
