stepping back is the best argument for leaving
I very specifically don't want to talk about anything serious right now. I had a bunch of weighty thoughts today and while I think it would be nice to work them over and share them at some point; I've been working long hours at the job I'm trying to get away from, and cramming in work for the things I'm trying to build around the edges.
I had made a semi-serious promise at the beginning of the year or February or something that I would be out of this job (the bad one) by mid-August, just in time for the convention I'll be attending and participating in. That deadline is starting to look more and more likely as the extraction process continues to develop and accelerate. Mostly because the more I pull away from this thing, the easier it becomes to see the ways in which I am uninterested in the work and how much I dislike the environment.
I've expounded on its many failings on prior occasions; it's far away (by my standards) from the rest of my life, the people are strange to me in a way that is alienating instead of interesting, the pay is mediocre, the hours are excessive, and a lot of the people are genuinely unpleasant.
I am rather fond of my immediate coworkers, even in their strangeness I think they are doing their best to be kind and curious about the world and that they have had lives that have been complicated and difficult in ways that I can't imagine. I think they're funny and hard working and genuine. Mostly I think they're incredibly weird and strange and I find that delightful.
As for the rest of the office, I think many of them are perfectly fine. But I think a lot of the biggest personalities and people in positions of power and authority are small minded, selfish, unkind, rude, racist, self-absorbed, incurious, shallow, and lack introspection.
Part of me can see the places where someone else could emerge from the shell of who these people are, some of them have tragic backstories, and some of them I wonder about. Some of them are fully grown adults who are only now beginning to understand how the wider world works and while that almost gives me hope, it also makes me fucking exhausted.
Take time to learn to look at yourself from the outside. Leave yourself out of the equation and make an effort to meet people where they're at, and always always always extend the courtesy you would like to receive on your worst day to the people around you.
Ugh. This got serious and now I'm mad about it.
Hit post.