Some Tangled Webs Weave Themselves

The thing about earning your living on the internet, ironically, is that you’re working without one — a net that is.  Everything is up in the air, always, and the way down is fast and full of bramble. Years are spent walking tightropes and following links like paths before you that twist and turn and talk in code.  Break room walls are filled with status updates, profile pictures and invitations to quizzes, causes and ninja mafias.  Conversations around the water cooler are held to snippets of information 140 characters short.  Information is a highway and the engines search where once they roared.  Some call it progress.  You call it a living.

Being successful is a combination of what you know and who.  The tools of the trade are talent and tenacity.  The pay is not good.  The benefits are non-existent.  Pants are optional.  Hours are flexible.  Naps are encouraged and afternoon trips to the playground are mandated.  Happy Hour happens at the same desk that doubles as a lunch counter.  It is covered in coffee rings, trinkets and pens seldom used.  There are stacks of contracts, invoices and PR pitches layered between shopping lists, bills and crayon renderings of you in hero form.  The latter are as far-fetched as they are tangible.  They are the only real thing in the room.

Life on the web moves quickly, depending on the file size, and it never sleeps.  There is no closing time.

It is oh so glamorous and equally depressing.  It is the realization that in a world wide web you are only a fly and that spiders come along and sit down wherever the hell they want.  It is knowing that curds and whey is just a fancy name for cottage cheese.

And then that fast, hard fall through years of bramble — and the sudden warmth of sun shining upon the fresh, new ground where your two feet land.