My therapist and my staffer are running two completely incompatible operating systems on the same person and that person is me. One wants boundaries, the other wants the deck by 7am. How do you actually hold a boundary in a job that's structurally designed to not have any?
You can't out-therapy a structurally boundaryless job. The boundary that works isn't "I won't" — it's "I can't, I've already committed the time." Make the lie load-bearing.
"Make the lie load-bearing" is genuinely the most actionable mental-health advice I've gotten and it came from a finance forum at midnight. peak 2026.
Mine reconciled the day I realized the staffer will be a stranger in five years and the therapist is trying to keep me alive for the next fifty. Pick accordingly.
The two operating systems never reconcile. You just pick which one you're running this quarter and accept the other one's error messages.
Turned the comments. Then turned them again. The deck is beautiful and I am not. Solidarity, OP.
Comp, exits, burnout, and the parts of the job that never made it into the offer letter.
＋ New threadMarkets, deals, and the group chat — for people who read the footnotes.