Today I found myself scrolling through my old Google Docs in boredom—a troubling new productivity rock-bottom for me, and a scathing indictment of the day's social media content, which left me with nothing better to think about or do.

I scrolled through old scripts from my time at VML and instruction sheets I put together for my Streamlette dev team last year. It was a fun walk down memory lane. Past those, I got into old college notes, group study sheets and song lyrics, all long-covered in digital dust.

And then, nearly at the bottom, I found...

📂Google Docs

└📂Older Documents

└📂Work Stuff

└📂Miscellaneous

└📂Vitriol

My vitriol file.

A treasure trove of negative feedback I'd received, backhanded compliments I'd been given, and negative prognoses on my upward mobility. Pretty much everything that hurt my pride or damaged my career self-esteem between 2014–2017. I had forgotten it existed.

The first paragraphs were from my very first internship, as a PR writer at a digital creative shop in Salt Lake called Fusion 360. (I recently discovered that for some reason they still proudly display my intern profile on their list of staff). I thought I was hot stuff back then and so I copied and pasted nearly every piece of constructive feedback my bosses gave me into the file.

Here are a few gems:

"Titles need to be properly capitalized. Also, when writing for digital, paragraphs should generally be short (in general, no more than 4 sentences long)."

"Please hyperlink more than just the keyword set; hyperlink part of the sentence for each link. Thanks."

It's hilarious to me now that corrections like these used to bother me enough to warrant their enshrinement in the file—but they did. They made me mad. It was frustrating that my pieces were received with anything less than a jubilee celebration and my on-the-spot field promotion to SVP. Being asked to tweak them, and in some cases rewrite them, seemed like a crushing vote of no confidence.

I am very grateful that I did not act on these feelings of petulance and inadequacy. Instead, I tucked the offending suggestions into the vitriol file and did my best to quietly implement them. Six months later, at the end of the internship, I had a robust PR writing portfolio, a working knowledge of AP Style and a job offer.

The suggestions and speed bumps that had frustrated me so badly in the beginning had made me a much stronger writer, and actually opened doors.

Here's another gem from the file, this time from my stint on the PepsiCo team at VML. My ECD wrote this email to the team after an important internal review. It was MUCH longer than this excerpt, and significantly more profane. I include just enough to give you a taste.

I think we have strong concepts, so great work there. Now, for the not so pretty portion of the feedback. I was very disappointed in the amount of work (or lack thereof) that has taken place since our internal meeting. I hate writing emails like this, which pisses me off even more that I’m having to write it...

Some of you take your jobs for granted and it’s going to end up biting you in the ass. How often do we actually tell you to stay late or work over the weekend? Hardly ever, so when we say it, you need to listen. This is NOT a typical presentation and your BS answer for “that’s good enough, it gets the point across” isn’t going to work here. Push yourself beyond your comfort zone. Do research, craft your work, show why you aren’t dispensable. I said it before and I’ll say it again, this is the type of work creatives bitch and moan about not having all the time, yet it’s right here in front of you, and I only feel a couple of you rolling your sleeves up and looking at it as the opportunity that it truly is...

I expect more, period. You guys have an amazing opportunity and I feel you are pissing it away with the effort thus far. From this point moving forward (actually it’s always been the case, just putting it in writing) just being OK, is not going to be good enough to stay on this team...

I’m sorry for the directness in the note above. It’s not personal. I just want the best work possible from you guys....

Predictably, this note rocked our worlds. We got it as we were preparing to leave the office, like naive boaters heading into a typhoon sea without checking the forecast. Some team members were angry and indignant. Others actually cried. All of us were upset.

But of course there was only one thing we could do.

My creative director cut his family vacation short and immediately drove 8 hours to the office. The rest of us unpacked our bags again and got ready to spend the night desperately trying to save the campaign and our jobs. I worked nearly an 80-hour week, and others stayed longer than I did. Though miserable at first, this threat-level-midnight sprint quickly became kind of fun.

Working with that kind of desperate passion unlocked a degree of creativity and craft that we'd never wielded before. Long, focused hours in the office created a new, powerful sense of camaraderie. It was intensely rewarding to chase a goal so aggressively and make steady progress.

When we finally presented the work, we had created five fully-developed campaigns, far exceeding the client's expectations and buying the agency another full year with one of the world's most prestigious brands. Seeing the ads I wrote for that campaign papered across the New York subway was one of the most satisfying moments of my life. It's still some of the best stuff in my portfolio, and it never would have happened if we hadn't had our collective ego murdered by that email.

The thing about vitriol is that it ages like fine wine. If you drink enough of it, and your stomach hardens to it, its closing notes often taste a lot like success.

Beginning law school, I anticipate many new entries to the vitriol file. I hope to drink it manfully, and pray for the same results.