Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Am I Bad at My Job?
Chapter 2: My Millennial Obligation
Chapter 3: Just Don't Do It
Chapter 4: Your Driver's Name Isn't Driver
Chapter 5: How Technology is Leading us to our Demise (But Please Don't Take It Away)
Chapter 6: The Rat Race
Chapter 7: The Road Rattles You Open
Chapter 8: Cardboard Boxes
Chapter 9: IronWoman
Chapter 10: The Dumbest Place to Commit a Crime is in a Lyft
Chapter 11: YOLO
Chapter 12: I'll Do What I Want! A Millennial's Promise to Society
Chapter 13: Why It's Confusing to Name a City After a National Park
Chapter 14: The Quitters Club
Chapter 15: How to Build Your Resume
Chapter 16: Don't Forget to Plan For (a Temporary, Early) Retirement
Chapter 17: Bitches Love Vegetables
Chapter 18: A Type B Wannabe with Type A Tendencies
Chapter 19: My Return of Saturn
Chapter 20: Viva Las Vegas
Chapter 21: Spelunking
Chapter 22: Neverland
Chapter 23: Advice on Impressing a Gorilla
Chapter 24: Dirty 30
Chapter 25: The Cross-Country Sprint
Chapter 26: Love is What Keeps the World Spinning Round
Chapter 27: We're All Going to Die
Epilogue
Chapter 1 - Am I Bad at My Job?
"If you want something to happen, make a plan."
Seated across from Yuya on a tall plastic chair, I twisted my legs around each other until my ankles crossed. Dressed in a black fedora, graphic Nike tee, and Air Max sneakers, he had agreed to sit down with me for half an hour to share advice on how to map out my career.
I was working for Nike as a Digital Specialist and Yuya was the Director of Global Digital Marketing for the running category. I heard that he grew up in Japan but was sent to military school in the U.S. because he was, in his words, a very bad boy. I could never tell if he was fucking with me or not when he said that. More than once, I had heard it suggested that he pretended his English was more limited than it was to have an advantage in social situations.
What I did know was that he'd committed himself to running every single day for a year since joining the running category, despite not being a runner before taking the job. This struck me as militant in approach, though I tried to understand his commitment to relating to the category's target consumer.
I also knew that he had two little girls that wore identical outfits every day, from their polka dot dresses down to their tiny Nike sneakers. They weren't twins but they could almost pass as though they were.
YOU ARE READING
We're All Going To Die
Non-FictionIn 2015, I quit my digital marketing job at Nike to take a solo road trip around the country, funded by driving for Lyft in each of the cities I stopped in. In the beginning, I thought that driving for Lyft was simply the key to supporting the trip...