Villainy

Sometimes your job is to be the villain of somebody else’s story.

It sucks.

I’m not saying that you should become a mustache-twirling ne’er-do-well, but as you go around the universe and exist, you’re accidentally (I hope) going to do something untoward to somebody else.

Likely, you won’t even know it.

Probably, in your own eyes it won’t be bad, but it will be, and even if you realize it later, there’s roughly zero you can do to make it up.

In the best of situations, you will be a motivating factor in somebody else’s growth, even though you will never be a hero to them.

That person you fired, even if it was to save ten jobs, won’t EVER think you are a good person, no matter what you do.

Or that editor you didn’t hire because you went another way, is never going to look at you in a good light, even if they understand.

Or even when your book launches better than somebody else’s, they’re going to look to YOU as the bad guy, even if you earned it.

Or maybe you accidentally cut somebody off, or hung up on them, or unfriending them on Facebook (or NOT confirming their request), or just passing them over and not looking their way.

Any number of innocuous things that happen during the course of a day that we barely think about once they do.

This post might be villainous to somebody for all I know.

While we’re forging the heroic path for ourselves, we’re becoming the villains in other stories all over the place. I cannot overstate how much this sucks, but it is part of growing a business.

You should always try to mitigate any negative you put out into the world and try your best to make up for what you’ve done.

But sometimes, somebody won’t forgive you.

Sometimes, they shouldn’t forgive you.

Sometimes, you will be the bad guy.

And that is your role in that story.

It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, just because you’re a bad guy.

Don’t get it twisted, though, sometimes you are just a bad guy, and in those situations, you need to look yourself in the mirror and have a reckoning with yourself.

This is not carte blanch to be a dick. Quite the opposite, in fact, but even if you do something right, you’re absolutely going to come off as a villain sometimes.

You should always try to do the right thing anyway, but occasional villainy is a side effect of existing in the world and trying to succeed. You created villains out of people, and so too will people make villains out of you.

And you just have to sit with that, and exist knowing it, trying not to let the thought fester inside of you.