It’s been a while.
A while since I’ve unleashed my inner demons and wandered into the familiar terrain of absurdity, isolation, and the meaninglessness of it all. Every so often, the darkness creeps in, trying to lure me back to its bed of thorny roses - pain and suffering dressed up like an old friend.
Well hello? Darkness my old friend...
So, what have I been up to? The same old same old, you know, work.
Imagine Sisyphus Happy
On paper, things look great: better schedule, better pay, and the ability to have an actual life outside the screen. In reality, it’s the same corporate BS, competition, lack of recognition, and backroom politics that make you wonder if “The Man” was specifically invented to test you or slowly drain the soul out of you. Until you no longer have it.
For years, I built my whole identity around work - trying to prove I was just as competent as the next guy while still being true to myself. I kept myself put together so I didn’t look like I spent ten hours in front of a computer… even though, let’s be real, I absolutely did. I was a cave-dweller for quite a while if I am being honest.
The quote from Severance nailed it:
8 hours of working does not mean healing.
I used to work a lot to numb myself from the world and from my own thoughts. I thought if I worked hard enough, I could escape. I couldn’t.
This time around, I’m not running from my mind. I want to face it. I want to experience both suffering and joy - in full, uncomfortable detail. I’m no longer letting work dictate who I am or how I feel about myself. I am enough. And whether or not someone in the office notices, promotes, or overlooks me is no longer the lever that tips me into a spiral.
So, fuck it. The four walls of an office (or home office) can keep their 8 hours. I’ll keep my identity outside them.
Here’s the hard truth: building a strong internal security system is exhausting. Rewiring a mind that craves external validation? That’s a full-time job in itself. But it’s worth it. Work will now be a means to fund my life, not define it.
My work will no longer be the measure of my intellect. I want other intellectual pursuits beyond work - meaningful activities that connect me with people who think, feel, and dream on the same wavelength. I’m tired of the surface-level exchanges that pass for connection at work. It’s like carrying an invisible backpack of weight that no one else can see, always bracing for the moment it drags me down again. Out there, it’s competitive, cutthroat, animalistic. I’ll do what’s expected of me, then call it a day. I’m not part of that jungle anymore.
Perhaps the overall point is to simply live. Not in some grand, cinematic adventure - but in the quiet, mundane moments most of us overlook. Outside the usual Sisyphean grind. To be present for the laughter, the loneliness, the heartbreak, and the small daily wins.
Like, what’s the point if we’re all going to die? Well… maybe that’s the point. Live fully anyway. Feel your existence so strongly that even the pain carries meaning. That’s the answer to this whole existential dread, at least the one Camus offers us.
And so here I am. Still resilient, still present, still showing up, and still creating my own meaning.
In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
As long as that summer’s there, I’m good.
