This Week, I Wrote About ...

Poop. Yes, poop. The reality of life and a mortgage.

Apr 06, 2025

“Get a degree at Vassar!” they said, “Be one of the elite! One day, you can write about poop!”

Okay, they never said that last part.

19 years old (with my nephew Joe), obviously dreaming about poop writing one day.

But last week, I, Lisbeth Darsh, Vassar graduate, holder of the degree Master of the Humanities, former commissioned officer in the United States Air Force, and one-time CrossFit Global Kool-Aid Pourer, wrote about poop for my day job.

Why? Because (as some of you already know) I direct digital marketing for a botanical supplements company. And we have a new product that helps you poop. So my team and I created website landing pages and poop Calls to Action, which are those big buttons you see everywhere like this:

Behold this popular poop product!

(Props to those of you who clicked that button and are now wondering, “How do I get that image out of my head?”)

I also edited a few articles on poop and helped design a webpage. (And FYI, natural supplements may not be your BFF but they’re a solid #2.)

It was a pooptaculur week!

Yes, I did just write that. (I might need an intervention.)

This wasn’t how I planned for life to be when I was 21 and graduating from Vassar but hey shit happens. (Ahahaha. Yes, I did just say that and I’m not taking it back.)

Goofy Me regrets nothing. Not even buying that Mini in 2011.

But really it wasn’t a bad week. I’ve never laughed as hard in a meeting as I did when we built that poop product page on Tuesday.

Not exactly us but AI really will make you anything.

Whether any of us likes it or not, poop is funny stuff.

My team ROARED while we were working — and that felt like a bigger win than any money anybody could throw my way.

This is the good stuff, even if we were centered on poop.

Because, honestly, work has been a little rough over the past year and there weren’t so many opportunities for fun and funny times.

But I am always working to keep my team from getting buffeted by the winds of change. That’s my responsibility as a leader. In the military, we called it being a “shit screen.” (I am not making this up.) I was trained to believe that a leader takes the crap that comes from the top and keeps it from landing on their troops.

No one needs this image but here it is! 👍

And that’s what I do most days. Stabilize our flight. Provide directional input and keep us moving forward, even in a shit storm.

But(t) Laughter Is the Good Stuff

Fun is what I need and want — and so does my team. And I’m glad that, even in a nation of chaos and a time of turbulence, four people working remotely on the West Coast on Tuesday could collaborate and laugh so hard that their faces hurt.

Because although this society focuses on the money and the bling, you can’t buy laughs. You can’t buy trust. You can’t buy warm, fun, friendly times with people you care about.

I asked AI for *“4 poop friends smiling for the camera”* and it gave me this. I think it still works?

Writing and designing about poop may not be the dignified, society-leading, barrier-smashing work that I dreamt about all those years ago when I was a brash 17-year-old at Vassar.