The first season of The West Wing is so fantastic. I can't recommend it highly enough. I've never watched a TV show that was at once entertaining, moving and educational. I'm so inspired to get back into politics and have a renewed interest to listening to anything the president's staff has to say on NPR in the mornings. In fact, I'm more interested in what the president has to say and I haven't listened to that guy in years.
There are so many quotable quotes and I'm constantly thinking how much this show reminds me of my work situation. I work at a mediocre company with a mediocre product. The company was once different and new and made money so no one ever told them that they were doing it wrong. No one ever pointed out that promoting from within can be a bad move if no one working there has ever worked anywhere else. No one ever thought competitively or wondered how to get ahead because they were already ahead. And then they weren't. And now they really aren't.
I've become really good friends with a co-worker there - we've bonded over our mutual brightness and too-good-for-the-company-ness. But despite hating it, we've given almost a year of our lives out of some kind of nihilistic desire to fix the place. We have succeeded but the change and growth is at such an incremental level. It's like getting crumbs that keep you from starving to death but all the while, you're starving. Just not to death. But almost to death.
We're praised for our good ideas but swatted back into our place if we challenge someone else's ideas. We're "allowed" to work on projects the way we want but then given no support so it's more work than it's worth. Sometimes we're just flat out attacked or insulted for being who we are. One night watching The West Wing a character said to Charlie, the president's aide who was the target of an assassination attempt for dating the president's daughter:
"If they're shooting at you, you know you're doing something right."
Damn right.
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