The difference between apathy, ignorance, and ambivalence

I don't care, I don't know, one way or the other

Follow me as I move to Vermont, consult a life wizard, and quit a 30-year marketing career—all to test the adage, "It's never too late to be what you might have been." If you find something that strikes you, please share this newsletter with your reinventing, resilient, slightly rebellious friends. 

Apathy

I had my last annual performance review in April 2018. Neither my boss nor I addressed it at the time, but I’d guess now that we were both pretty sure that, within the year, I was either going to quit or get redeployed—that’s corporate speak for laid off, made redundant, shitcanned, fired, having no further value.

We sat in one of several glass-walled conference rooms in the center of the office. The industrial-meets-futuristic space was designed to facilitate the company’s vision of spontaneous ideating, team-building, and transparent collaboration. The effect was to feel like you were always on display, especially if you had the boss’s ear. Passers-by scanned the occupants, the display screens, and the body language for any indication of shifting political winds. Well, I did.

“I don’t want to say attitude,” my manager said before settling on the phrase “new energy” to describe how she felt I’d changed since the start of the year. But she had said attitude and the negative implications of the word choice stung.

We were about to discuss my future goals (still committed to going through the motions) when a tap on the glass interrupted us. While she stepped out, I considered my future like a fly trapped between window pane and screen.

Staying meant continuing to bang my head against a glass ceiling I had no desire to break through. Leaving would puncture a hole in my financial safety net and, what’s more, my identity.

Ignorance

I spent much of my marketing career creating value propositions—also known as unique selling propositions—for the products and solutions my company sold. I followed a simple formula that looks something like this:

For: target audience

Wants: problem to be solved

What: product

Helps: specify how the product solves the problem

Goal: target audience has no more problem

What if I was the target audience? I mentally tried to complete the template. For a middle-aged woman who wants to know what might have been, a life wizard would help her discover her path, so she can — what?

I’d once said I wanted more responsibility, if only because it had been the next logical step. Ambition was valued. I was supposed to want to climb the ladder, right? Except I didn’t. Sitting in that conference room, I knew I wouldn’t put my feet on another rung. But what then?

Ambivalence

I remember a conversation with a different manager a few years earlier. She was a bone-thin pixie-cut go-getter with a reputation for being tough. After a long day of meetings, she and I sat in the lobby bar of a newly refurbished Westin outside of Boston. Light jazz played in the background, and I’d struggled to read the menu in the dusky purple and burnished brass atmosphere designed to mimic a sunset.

She and I were about the same age but worlds apart. She’d ordered a martini with a specific brand of vodka, or maybe it was a top-shelf whiskey, or perhaps a California chardonnay. No matter. What I mean to say is that her sophistication made an impression.   

I asked the waiter to bring me a local beer. I liked to flash my Vermont simplicity around—snobbery in reverse was a defense mechanism. We shared stories about home renovation nightmares. She recalled the weeks she searched for switch plate covers to match her kitchen tile. In comparison, I used the forty-nine-cent plastic ones from Home Depot in my farmhouse kitchen. I felt superior about that, somehow.

“So?” She set her drink on the table. “What are your goals?”

I wanted to fold my feet under me and finish my beer in silence, but I supposed that wasn’t the answer she expected. I muttered something about continuing to learn, developing my leadership skills, and being part of a team.

Silence. We both sipped our drinks.

When the bitter cold snap of the micro-brewed IPA hit my tongue, I tasted my mountain dream. The longing for home was as palpable as the cold beer tingling in my throat.

Ice clinked. She lowered her glass, leaned toward me, and said, “You can’t be ambivalent about what you want.”

Not since my mother said, “learn to type,” had I heard more prescient advice.

The lights in the bar dimmed, and the walls reflected the twilight sky. Somewhere beyond the hotel windows and the highway, my aspirations had already been written in the granite ridges, rolling meadows, and cheap plastic light fixtures of home.

Kitty, couldn’t care less or she cares very much. I’m never sure.

Work hard. Be brave. Believe.

Catherine

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