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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • I work a “9-5,” which is basically remote meetings or email from 7-8:30 while I try to eat something and get my kids dressed, work through lunch so I can take “lunch” at the end of the day to be able to pick my kids up in time, go home and finish emails and hope to wrap up by dinner.

    How people are working schedules like this is beyond me. I’m going insane as it is, and my job is “cushy.” My doctor tells me I need to work less and create less stress in my life or I’m going to start bleeding out of my ears, and he looks more tired than I do. I feel like the only hour or two I get to relax is right before bed, which makes me stay up late desperately trying to hold onto that feeling of mild relaxation because I know, at best, I won’t feel that way for another 24 hours.

    My doctor says I need to follow up and crap for concerns, and I keep explaining to him that I have to come during work, which means 12min out if his day, but between driving, checking in, waiting in the waiting room, finally going back to the patient room, nurse check in, waiting, talking to the doctor, checking back in at the front desk, then driving back to work DURING THE WORK DAY is like two hours, and it also means if I do the follow up, labs, follow ups, specialist, labs suggested… I’ll lose my job, which provides the insurance to afford those things in the fucking first place.

    Everyone where I work is scared to quit for fear of working more hours on a worse schedule for less money. Everyone at the top seems to work remote at will and forces us into meetings about how to reduce burnout like they do, which is apparently by working less, having more schedule freedom, and then bragging about it by holding meetings about how to live more like they do, which, if we did, would get all of us fired within a month.








  • Friends can matter to you more than family, and that’s ok, but family does a lot more for you than you realize.

    I didn’t have a great family, but it was only when I was upset about a birthday party when I was like 12 where my mom made all the cards and buttons and stuff and I was so mad that it wasn’t the cool cards and prizes that you buy that I kind of realized it.

    It dawned on me like two weeks later that my parents couldn’t afford any of that, but they took time out of their day, for like two weeks, even though they both worked too much, to hand-make approximations as best they could. Without me knowing, so I would be surprised.

    Ever work a double shift and then spend the few minutes you have not working, sleeping, or cooking to hand-make party favors? Yeah, me either.

    It still makes me cry thinking about how ungrateful I was and the look of sadness and yearning on my mom’s face when I got mad at her for not buying the “good” stuff.

    When I was 20, I sat her down and told her about it and how bad I felt, and how I never knew how to apologize for it. We had a good cry, and she thanked me for seeing it eventually, and how happy it retroactively made her knowing I realized it so soon after.


  • Many parts of Japan are stunningly beatiful. The largest cities are some of the most overwhelming places I’ve ever been, but everything works much better than you might expect.

    The people are generally respectful and kind if you are the same. I found people to be generally tolerant of unintended rudeness from a foreigner, especially if you apologize. Jokes and humility go a long way.

    There’s a TON of Japanese people there. Like, they’re freaking EVERYWHERE.