Onboarding

Friday February 28, 2025

It’s been a while since I went through an official onboarding process. I’ve had a few full-time contracts in recent years, but this is the first time I’ve been fully onboarded to a company since 2016. Now I understand why there’s so much discussion on how to improve these processes.

I was a little nervous about joining an organization. Fortunately, this week has reinforced the feeling that I didn’t just waste the last six years of my life working independently.

This is a writing-focused job, but my manager has told me she doesn’t really expect me to start writing for at least two weeks. She’s told executives that the new writer onboarding process (they’re bringing on a few more after me) will take between three and four weeks. But, really, I feel like I could have started writing on day one.

The company has pretty extensive documentation about content strategy and editorial practices, but I already know most of it. There’s some useful stuff about internal tools and how they work with specific clients, of course, but much of what I’m reading has me wondering if I’m overqualified for this role. (Although it’s also given me clarity on future growth within the company, so that’s neat.)

Yesterday, I gained a new appreciation for my liberal arts education after a 90-minute call about style, sourcing, and compliance — all stuff I’ve been actively observing since my first class at Oberlin. But it’s not all old news. I’ve also been deep-diving into the Semrush Blog and LinkedIn Learning to get a more technical SEO and content marketing education, stretching some muscles I haven’t in a few years (and probably won’t need to for a year or two, but still).

I was worried that I was going to come in here and be completely out of my depth. That appears to not be the case.

Most of us have a tendency to entertain impostor syndrome. We doubt what we know; we struggle to consider ourselves experts in anything and focus more on what we don’t know than what we do. The corporate world preaches this continuous development complex that, while noble in theory, can breed more doubt than confidence. The message we ultimately receive from employers, peers, and the media we consume every day is that we should never be satisfied. In Buddhism, to be content with ourselves is nirvana. In America, it’s an admission of failure.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t pursue knowledge or learn new skills — of course, you should do those things. But do so because you want to, not because you feel some social imperative to improve. It’s a dirty little secret that you already know so much more than you realize, you may just not exist in an environment to recognize it. And you’re probably receiving incessant signals that you need to know more.

We’re expected to stay in a perpetual onboarding state, growing, striving, setting new goals and taking on new responsibilities. I’m voluntarily returning to that achievement state, but after reading onboarding materials, talking OKRs, and sitting through basic editorial training sessions, I’m surprised by how much I managed to learn subconsciously this last decade. I’m positive you’re doing it, too.

Look at all those chickens.

One Book: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

I’ve been looking for an excuse to mention this book for a while. It’s the only book about writing I’ve ever liked because it’s really more about philosophy. The core idea is that writing is a messy, imperfect process that can only be refined by doing it.

To me, that idea translates much more cleanly to life than to writing.

It’s funny, I never bought Lamott’s advice and guidance on writing. I am just never going to be somebody who brain-dumps surface ideas to get to the good stuff lying beneath. I don’t believe my brain works like that; in fact, it’s very much the opposite. My good stuff is almost always near the top, just waiting to be activated by some external stimulus. My best ideas come on walks with Goose or, as cliché as it sounds, in the shower, never while I’m actively working. (It’s not lost on me that these are polar opposite settings.) I see the structure and write to it, I never write it into existence. The idea of writing 2,000 bad words to get to 5,000 good ones makes me physically uncomfortable. Words 5,000+ would flow like 3rd-grade Klingon.

That said, the concept of performing the bad to reach the good resonates deeply. Few of us peak in middle school. A very short audit of my social media proves that I’ve sifted through a whole lot of bad. I think I’ve been getting to some good in my 30s.

“You can’t tell, but I’m blacked out right now.” - William Faulkner, probably.

One Quote: “Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.” - William Faulkner

Faulkner’s got a ton of great quotes, including the greatest chapter in American literature: “My mother is a fish.” (Vardaman in As I Lay Dying.) This one feels appropriate in a world obsessed with labels. Identity builds through choices and experiences, not titles.

One Song: “The High Road” by Broken Bells

Broken Bells broke the internet in 2010 when they released this single, the first off their eponymous debut album. Danger Mouse and The Shins’ frontman James Mercer teaming up for an album was a huge deal in the college music world. “The high road is hard to find” hits for those of us in perpetual growth stage.

One Hollywood: Reacher, Prime Video

This has nothing to do with onboarding, but my dad turned me onto it last weekend. The writing is a little goofy sometimes, but it’s mostly entertaining, and the action is great. If you’ve seen Blue Mountain State, Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher will mess with your brain for a minute.

One Recipe: Creamy Gnocchi Chicken Soup, Half Baked Harvest

Busy winter weeks call for soup. When you’re going through an onboarding process and don’t have a whole lot of time to cook, this is an excellent recipe. We use a Trader Joe’s mirepoix to cut down on prep time, and I add about a tablespoon of tomato paste.

One Place: The Sidewalk Luge Across the Street

It’s finally warmed up in Boston, and the rampant precipitation has changed from snow to rain. While that makes for a disgusting, muddy, soaking hellscape outside, it did at least melt the 200-foot sheet of ice on the sidewalk leading down our hilly street.

It’s bittersweet. On the one hand, I’m not going to slip and crack my skull as I nearly did half a dozen times. On the other, I can’t holler, “Mush!” at Goose as he pulls me down the hill.

Unfortunately, all that ice also caused a crack in our driveway to rise about six inches, and the wet Earth has made the path to our front door an unstable hazard, so we’ve got a whole lot of paving to do this summer. Joys of homeownership. You never stop getting onboarded.