Patrick Bringley writes about his time working at The New Yorker in All the Beauty in the World: 

It took me almost three years to grasp an unwelcome paradox. If I were working a less “impressive” job, I would be scribbling my thoughts down in obscurity, free to take big swings at whatever topic inspired me. Here in the big leagues, however, my thoughts were cramped and my ambitions were curiously small. I spent my time trying to write one-paragraph book reviews in the “Briefly Noted” section, using a voice that was not my own, claiming authority I hadn’t earned, and expressing opinions I often wasn’t sure I really held. 

Meanwhile, the office part of the job seemed also to have narrow horizons—ironically, nothing like what a museum guard enjoys. My colleagues and I cobbled together systems such that I didn’t always have forty hours of work to do in a week, but by the customs of the modern office, there I sat. Also by custom, I couldn’t open a book at my desk, or take a head-clearing walk, but it was just expected that I’d waste hours clicking around on the Internet, learning how to not read books. So into that muck I sank. And before long I became something I had never really been before: lazy. 

This was a really hollowing disappointment. I don’t know exactly what I expected upon entering the “real world” after college, but I expected that it would feel real. But now here I was with a seat in a gleaming skyscraper, midtown Manhattan roaring below, and my prestigious job amounted mostly to playing a kind of computer game: in-box, out-box, sent.

There is a sense of stifling that comes with the experience—the training, the customs, the social conformity—of working with a prestigious organization.

The necessary creative work, which can often feel messy, amateur, and improper, is shunted aside in favor of trying to do proper work that feels important. Everything feels too precious.

Obscurity is a gift that you can have at any moment, as long as you know how to appreciate it.