2025 08 31

A tree disappears into the distance. Bloomington, Indiana. November, 2022. © Clayton Hauck

In “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” C.S. Lewis goes all-in on a vision of democratic decline. His writing from seventy-or-so years ago hit me like a slap to the face while our democracy appears to be failing all around us. The read is worth you time (as is his book I found it in: The Screwtape Letters), but I only bring it up to lay out the scene for today’s short story.

Perhaps it was my mood affecting me; on a rare day off, while doing house chores, dripping in sweat, I opened my email to see a message from a producer asking me to get him an image pull by the end of the day. Everything is always needed immediately in my business. What would normally be a nice thing to see (someone potentially interested in you working on a project), on this day struck me as being so frustrating that I reconsidered my entire career. Clearly, this specific incident, while slightly annoying in its timing (I’d really needed this day to catch up on house chores I’d been neglecting!), was more so a reminder of bigger concerns and frustrations with the industry (won’t get into all that now). Regardless of why I was frustrated, it was another detail that put me over the edge this specific day: I didn’t like the specific client I would be making the work for.

While I was having my existential crisis, I reached out to a number of trusted friends to get their opinion on my dilemma. The client, you see, was one that hasn’t had much good PR recently. Quite the opposite, in fact. I figured the trusted council I received would at least somewhat mirror my reluctance to drop everything to help out this particular corporation, however, without fail everyone told me, simply: take the money! In my head, it was a lose-lose situation. The universe was testing me and I didn’t even fully understand the potential consequences, I just knew it was somehow a fork-in-the-road moment.

I don’t think I’m unique in feeling like not much is working these days. It’s not just my job and my industry, it’s most peoples’. This, perhaps, was my biggest takeaway from the incident, which is now well behind me (I didn’t get the job, but I did try to! I could really use the money, of course). My thinking was that friends would see my frustrations and side with me, but I was instead met with the exact opposite reaction — shit is hard right now and you need to take a win when you can get it.

In trying to end this thought on a positive note, I pondered a way to tie it back towards The Screwtape Letters. But since this incident occurred, screwworm has entered the United States, so perhaps it is more appropriate to end it in dismay. Stay sane out there.

-Clayton