03/05/2025 - Sad Panda

03/05/2025 - Sad Panda
Photo by Ying Wu / Unsplash

Today's Rating: 3/10

Song of the Day: Bottle Rocket - Briston Maroney

Current Book: Revenge of the Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

Overall, a negative day yesterday. Maddie and I like to call these kind of days "sad panda" days where there's just a lingering melancholy over the whole day regardless of attempts to cure it. At first, I thought it was just my job in general that was weighing on me, but one of the perks of writing these blogs is that I get to do a small retrospective on the previous day which may uncover hidden feelings/thoughts.

I think even more than the ridiculousness of the request that LFC asked for and my "leadership" approved is what I see in terms of a future for myself if I were to stay at my current job. Despite my grievances with my work/life balance, I see several of my coworkers and people higher than that in the org chart that have it even worse than myself. I'll regularly see chats/emails/tickets with updates at all hours of the nights and on weekends. For instance, this morning I saw a chat come in from my boss at 12:53 AM. Now he does live on the west coast so it was 9:53 PM for him, but that still disgusts me. And that's only the first example that comes to mind and not even the most egregious offense I've seen.

It's just incredibly disheartening to see that because I want to do well and excel in my job, but if the reward is just more work and even worse hours, no marginal amount of money is really worth that. Unfortunately, I don't have the personality to be a slacker either because I'm a natural-born people-pleaser, so I just feel stuck at the moment between a rock and a hard place. The only outlet I see for myself is a new job, and I've been trying to find one (casually) for ~2 years at this point almost with little luck.

I don't really have the energy to fully recount my day yesterday, so I'm just going to bullet-point it below:

  • Soul-sucking work for green paper (actually just pixels on a screen)
  • Checking on the in-laws dog/chickens
  • Reading my book

Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow!