The Tao of Peggy Olson

With AMC’s Mad Men having recently poured its final glass of 9am bourbon, neat, I am left with a moment to reflect on the show whose legacy was always a little bit grander than its reality. And really, isn’t that sort of what we’re all aiming for in life? You’ll see a hundred op/ed pieces on the technical hits or misses of the show, but for me, even though the show was centered around Don Draper, the true protagonist of the series was Peggy Olson. Don’s was a journey that was focused on discovery on self (and probably more than a couple of STDs as well), but Peggy’s was a true battle. A David vs. Goliath struggle where sometimes her Goliath was the ultra-misogynistic corporate workplace of the 1960s and /70s, and sometimes her Goliath was herself. With that in mind, I present a handful of moments that Peggy brought us that will stick with me much longer than Don’s loose views on fidelity and identity theft. And so I present to you:

THE TAO OF PEGGY OLSON

“When I was little, my mom would take a twin pop and break it in half and give one to me and one to my sister. We were completely equal in her eyes. Beloved. Everyone does this with Popsicles, but they may not realize what it means. It has nothing to do with an ice cream truck on a hot summer day. Or the flavor. Or the color. It’s a ritual. You take it, break it, share it, and love it.” —Season 2, Episode 12
• A central theme for Peggy throughout the Mad Men series was that of love. Not just romantic love, but familial love, love in friendship, love in a professional environment, and love of self (or at least learning to accept yourself for who you are). This mini monologue (minilogue?) is a great example of Peggy romanticizing her own past (to a fault, at times) for the sake of remembering the good and the love that surrounded her, rather than focusing on the negative aspects of life. Classic Peggy.

“Every time something good happens, something bad happens.”  —s4,e11
• Peggy’s strength as a character (and as a person) isn’t that she’s blindly naive and ignorantly optimistic, it’s that she sees the world for the crappy, run down mess that it is…but chooses to hope anyway. Anyone can live a sheltered life and think the world a perfectly pleasant place, the real challenge is to continue to seek after your ideals in spite of adversity. If Peggy was a pro boxer, she wouldn’t be a one-punch wonder, she’d be the sort of marathon fighter who wears you out by taking hit after hit for twelve rounds and staying on her feet till the final bell. And in life you’re going to have a lot more knockdown, drag-out fights to endure than quick, Muhammad Ali-esque 15-second KO’s. Be built for the full twelve.

“Well, I’m fun! And I love to have…fun.” —s3,e4
• For the pitch perfect pitchman she became (pitchwoman? Pitchperson?), Peggy was always a little too humble to really sell herself, and we see that here in her awkward attempt to sound…well, fun, on a first date. Even though she struggles to really sell herself for the great gal she is in this particular instance, she manages to get to the heart of “free time Peggy,” which is that even though her work/life balance might have been a little uneven at times, at her core she’s still just a girl who wants to have fun, and be fun to be around to others. Despite how intense her career focus could be at times, you still get the idea that she found fun in her work, and wanted others to find the fun in theirs as well (as long as it didn’t compromise the quality of the final product). Remember kids: Be fun, have fun. It’s what Peggy would want.

“Don Draper: That’s how this works. I pay you for ideas.
Peggy Olson: You never say ‘Thank you.’
Don Draper: That’s what the money is for!” —s4,e7
• Despite her eventual rise to the top creative ranks in the ad agency world, Peggy was never in it for the money or the power or even the acclaim…she was in it for the respect that she knew she deserved and the recognition of her talent in a world that tried repeatedly to write her off. A recurring theme throughout the series is Peggy working out her daddy issues through Don (sometimes effectively, sometimes not), and ultimately having the revelation that we all need to have: someone else’s approval is never going to replace or validate our own self worth. I know a lot of us feel under-appreciated and even unloved in our professional and/or personal lives, but the moral of the story is that it’s up to us to know that we have value, rather than waiting for the accolades of the outside world that may or may not ever arrive. Easier said than done, perhaps, but worth the effort nonetheless.

“Don’t do anything stupid.” —s6,e5
• At the end of the day (one of my all-time most hated clichés, but gets the point across), we almost always know the right thing we should say or do or not do in a given situation, but the real test of mettle is whether or not we can act on that knowledge, to resist the easy path in favor of the more difficult one, even if it’s less rewarding or we won’t get any recognition for doing so. How many times in your life have you looked back on something you regret and thought, “Geez, that was stupid…I knew better”? And you’re right, you did! The difficulty lies in having the willpower to not do the stupid thing in front of you, no matter how appealing it might be in the moment. A daily battle for most of us (or at least me), but a battle worth fighting, even if the victories are more infrequent than the failures. But just know that in spite of your past mistakes, you have ability to make the right choice the next time. And the next time. And the time after that. I’m pulling for you. And so is Peggy Olson. I’ll even buy you a shot of bourbon when you get there. Good luck and God bless.

Play on,
Dustin

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every other Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox! …Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…even I don’t like me enough to keep up with all that.

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“You Have Plenty of Time” and Other Falsehoods I Need to Jot Down in the Next Three Minutes

You’ve heard it said, reassuringly, patronizingly, relentlessly your whole life (or at least you will have by the time you’re my age). “You have plenty of time” they say. Whether it’s your parents comforting you after a rough break up, or the lady taking your order at Bennigan’s, people just want to remind you that you have plenty of time to do whatever it is you need to do, and not to worry.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

Sure, the statistical probability that you and I will wake up tomorrow alive and well is pretty high, but that’s not what people mean when they say you have plenty of time. What they’re actually saying is that they want you to feel comfortable in your present situation, and that, if you want, I can go check on a couple of other tables and check back with you in a few minutes.

The danger there is that thoughtful decision-making can lead to complacency, complacency can lead to stagnation, and stagnation can lead to the Dark Side.

(Wait sorry scratch that last part, there’s just a Star Wars marathon on right now on TBS, like always. They show that series of films so frequently that I thought TBS stood for “Turner Broadcasting StarWars until I was 23. True Story*).

Vocal About Backgrounds (Part One of Many or Maybe Just This One)

Lyric videos are sweet, here’s a lyric video that I  made  found on the internet, using technology. You may be wondering: What makes this lyric video special — besides the fact that it’s one of the songs I sang background vocals on for the new House of Heroes album? Nothing. That is the only special thing about it.

Because Americans are lazy, and usually overweight, I’ve embedded this lyric video (only because I couldn’t link to the cheeseburger that you actually want):

There’s an official, people-filled version of this music video as well, but I’m not posting that version because I think it distracts from the background vocals. Background vocals where I was intentionally asked to sing, not like my usual musical requests which typically vary in range from “please stop” to “stop” to “Denny’s doesn’t have a karaoke night, you need to leave.”

The album, called Cold. Hard. Want., by House of Heroes (feat. Dustin Heveron), releases July 10th. If Carson Daly were still a thing, he would say that the album “drops” on July 10th, to try and sound hip/relevant. Then he’d say some snappy one-liner about the album, something like “Hey, do you have any change I can borrow for cab fare?” Carson Daly had (and maybe still has, I haven’t checked) a talk show on at 1:30 in the morning — its primary competition in that timeslot is the night’s second repeat showing of the Shake-Weight infomercial and a blue screen that plays the Emergency-Broadcast System beep on a nonstop loop. It’s an ideal show for people who fell asleep while Late Night with Jimmy Fallon was on and still haven’t woken up to change the channel, or people who’ve masturbated too furiously for their forearms to have enough strength left to operate their TV remote. People Magazine once praised it as “a show that is on television.” House of Heroes will be on tour this summer, you should go to their webbed-sites for more information, and buy their album when it comes out in July. If you want to buy only the tracks that have my BGVs on them, I don’t blame you, and I will post some sort of list on my webbing-site that tells you which ones have them. I’ll also call them and ask if they’ll release a version of the CD that only has tracks I sang background on, to save you the trouble of having to ask them yourself. Currently there are no plans for them to sell a T-shirt with my likeness on it.

I read a blog post about 27 tips on how to make your blog more accessible to people, and it says you should end posts with a question to the reader. I’m not doing a very good job of following its advice so far.

Cheers,
Dustin

Swearing. Drinking. Christian. An Essay on Double Standards

It is with heavy heart that I have to tell you ahead of time: this post will not be funny.  It will be long (that’s what she said) and it will likely be quite boring (…that’s what she said?) for most of you.

I struggled for the better part of 90 seconds trying to force myself to abandon the topic on my mind and write something purely funny so you guys could have a laugh to cap off your Monday evening. It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve written something on here that was for purely humorous purposes, and I really wanted this post to break the trend. But alas, after the aforementioned thinking, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So all ye who fear the real, jump ship now and I shan’t hold it against you. That said, I’ll try to still make this a read that’s worth your while…assuming I haven’t bored you to tears already.