Tuesday Night Check-In: Words Still Hurt and other things

 Do we have a moral obligation to the people in our lives? If so, what?

It just seems like the rules are constantly shifting and it just matters what the topic of the day is - wage parity, self-care, selflessness, loyalty, office-speak, happiness.

They say men are from Mars, women are from Venus. But like what about Becky from Bloomington or Charlie from Cubicle C? 

It's amazing that everyday a civil war doesn't break out. 

When we all have different motivations, how is it that we've even gone this long without terrorizing each other. But I guess we do just on small scales and global scales.

There is so much pain in the world and this constant need to forgive, heal, talk it out, blah blah blah. I get it. I get why there's terrorism. I get why there's mass shootings. I get domestic violence. I know it sounds terrible. 

But we are constantly hurting each other. Sometimes words just aren't enough. The words often are the first thing that hurt us. Then actions. Then bigger actions. 

Flicking from Body Cam where people hurt each other with metal weapons to something seemingly frilly like Bachelor in Paradise where people hurt each other with verbal weapons. Lies hurt. 

At least with physical pain it's so instant and often in the heat of the moment. But like lying to someone over and over and over again. It's tough. It's tough to untangle. And because you can't see psychological pain, people think you can just go over it. 

Having been lied to and duped for a year, I can tell you that hate and resentment is hard to recover from. I would've almost preferred they slapped me at least I could've known right away that they were a bad person. But lies are so sticky. 

The worst part about the lie I just saw on Bachelor on Paradise is that the abuser tried to make it seem as though he was doing the victim a favor. That she actually benefitted from his lie. Did you know you were a domestic terrorist? Did you know you were an abuser? Is that not what a liar is. 

And what gets me is the woman that laughs it up with him - as though she won't be next.

So I ask again, what do we owe our fellow man? 

It doesn't seem like anything. 

I'm sooo over self-care and boundaries. Do the thing that is right. Do the thing that is good for the next person. Do the thing that requires sacrifice. It's what so many people did for us. We benefitted from that. All of us. 

In Other News

Who did I talk to today?

Just exchanged a few messages with Work Frenemy. 

I realized in the last 6 weeks, I've had maybe 2 conversations that I recall with another human. The others were sporadic orientation meetings where I mostly just offered some placating statements, much like a chat bot. 

So maybe less than 2 hours of actually forming real thoughts as part of a dialogue. Honestly the 2 people I talked to were part of my Frenemy list, so even though the conversations were long in duration, they do most of the talking. So less than 2 hours might be accurate. And the work meetings, I've mostly been an audience member and even those are 0-2 a day.

And I'm off the full week next week just to burn vacation time. I didn't do this last year because I was afraid of the silence. Well, this year it really won't make that much difference whether I'm logged in or not. It just saves me the task of actually logging in.  I was at first scared that I would miss important meetings but when I actually looked at my schedule it's 3 meetings - 1 is an employee engagement. The other 2 are comment resolution meetings which I mostly just listen in on. So, phew. Old Me even thought about logging in just to establish a presence. Nope. 

So on the Low Expectations front, I'm doing pretty well. Normally, I would be itching to make a difference. Honestly, those documents are so long and technical, that would be a huge lift. There are no low hanging fruit to be had here. Thanks, God!  I think there's also generally more admin support, so I think just less opportunity for small wins. Yay!

Honestly, I'm trying not to form any conclusions for this job because it's all tainted. I'm giving it until at least a good x amount of months until I can have a clearer mind.