Hit the wall hard, finally used the PTO I'd been hoarding like a dragon, fully unplugged for three weeks. Came back braced for the pile-up and the passive-aggression. Instead: nothing. The machine just routed around me. Don't know if that's the most freeing or most terrifying thing I've ever learned about this job.
"The machine just routed around me" is the single most clarifying and devastating thing I've read about this career. You're not a cog, you're a redundant cog. We all are.
The terror fades and the freeing part stays. Once you truly internalize that the machine routes around everyone, you stop sacrificing your body for it. Best lesson I ever learned, hated every second of learning it.
This is the comment I'll be thinking about at 11pm tonight when I decide whether to answer the "quick" email. thank you, genuinely.
Took a similar break before I quit for good. The "nobody noticed" was step one. Step two was realizing I didn't want to be noticed by them anymore.
The healthiest people I know in this industry all had a "nobody noticed" moment and chose to find it liberating instead of crushing. It's a choice. Took me years.
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Comp, exits, burnout, and the parts of the job that never made it into the offer letter.
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