In my ideal world, I’d be spending my time listening to goofy podcasts about sports and pop culture, building LEGO sets, playing video games, and doing all of it while hanging out with my family.

I don’t need a whole lot more in life. I mean, sure I want new toys, and new content to consume and talk to my wife and friends about, and be able to supply my kids with a life that is both fulfilling and fun, while also having a few challenges here and there just to keep life interesting.

I’m not a true crime person, and don’t really want to know about the horrible things that humans do to each other, I’d really rather just live in my little bubble of happiness and contentment and chill.

Simply put, my philosophy on life is summed up in Office Space, when asked what he would do if he had enough money to do anything, our protagonist Peter says something along the lines of “I’d do nothing”. And that’s what I would love to do. Just do… nothing. Nothing of value to society, nothing to change the world, nothing to make things different, I’d just… exist and enjoy the existing.

But, I don’t live in an ideal world. And neither do you. And we get to see the evidence of it on whatever size screen we’re looking at every day, and in some cases, people get to see it up close as the horrors of our world are thrust upon them.

And so, it feels disingenuous to just go about writing a blog about work.

Which is why this isn’t going to just be a blog about work today (I’ll launder some stuff in though don’t worry), it’s going to be about the difficulties we all face maintaining our focus and balance in this weird world and why we can’t be callous ghouls even when it’s easier than admitting that society, and by extension all of us, are simply not ok.

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I’m gonna just list some of the things that we’re all having shoved in our faces every day:

• The Epstein Files (which detail horrors done to CHILDREN by the worst imaginable people, who honestly sound like fake villains from movies and TV yet are actual real people)
• USAID cuts (probably not as top of mind for most people, but also a huge signal of our communities decision to no longer care about anyone but ourselves)
• Mass shootings (how many times do we need to re-run the Onion article before we can just… stop this nonsense?)
• Police shootings/killings (there are too many to detail)
• ICE lawlessness (I just can’t even with these fucking people, and if you are someone who works for ICE or support ICE and are reading this, your choices at this point are to either quit/renounce your support, or renounce our friendship, because if you are cool with people being dragged into gulags, murdered in the streets, etc. by a white supremacist gang… I’m good without you in my life)
• January 6th (I think this is the first time I saw someone who had just died on live tv, and you KNEW she was dead, and you KNEW she did it to herself because YOU DON’T GET TO STORM THE CAPITOL IN AN ATTEMPTED COUP WHILE ATTACKING POLICE OFFICERS AND HAVE THERE BE NO CONSEQUENCES unless you’re a white man then I guess you can do whatever you want huh?)
• Inflation/Price Gouging (so many of us are just trying to make ends meet at this point, and the impossibility of it becomes more and more clear as we move more money from people doing work to people who already had all the money. And yes, I’m writing this as I’m wearing a shirt that says Make Billionaires Extinct. And I’m increasingly in favor of that being done by force as we see how little these people actually care about the harm they cause)
• COVID (we NEVER fully grappled with what happened during the breakout of COVID. And we’re all suffering from it. Did you read my “ideal world”?! That’s a goddamn trauma response. I used to like being in public and doing things like go to concerts! Or at least I wouldn’t dread doing it! But now… even going out to dinner feels like a LOT… and that’s all residual COVID nonsense - and that’s NOTHING compared to people with long COVID still suffering!)
• The news industry collapsing in on itself (look at CBS news. Wanna hear my unvarnished thoughts on Bari Weiss? She’s probably the dumbest person in this entire era. She’s the absolute worst person and should be among the many put before congress when this whole mess is over and made to answer for her dumbassery)
• Everything is now politics (I wore a sweatshirt my wife gave me today that says “big fan of human rights” and EVERY PERSON that saw me told me how much they loved it… because it was a signal of actually caring about PEOPLE and somehow that is CLEARLY identifying me as a democrat. I don’t want that. I want no one to ever care about my political beliefs. I want to live in a world where the basic necessity of treating people as people is the baseline, not the pie in the sky goal.)
• Algorithms/Social Media (we are all being manipulated daily to hate one another, to be stupider, to have less impactful interactions - it’s bad ya’ll.)
• AI (nah, it’s cool, it just might take over the world, or launch all the nukes, or take all our jobs, or take all our water, or light the planet on fire, or or or maybe it could do something good? Who knows! We all will once it happens but not before if our government has anything to say about it)

I could probably keep on going but I’m just making myself angry.

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Now, it’s time to talk about work a little bit (just a little don’t worry).

Imagine how many of these external factors are affecting you at any given moment (not that the item is specifically impacting you, but that it’s somewhere in your head and making you think or worry about it) and then look around at everyone around you, and they’re probably experiencing equal measure of angst.

In addition, we all have our own personal angsts we’re dealing with, whether it’s financial pressures, family pressures, social pressures, existential pressures, health pressures, we’re all shouldering a HELL of a lot right now.

And yet, what I’m finding is, most of the people I work with are not only motivated but also they’re incredibly caring and empathetic (drink)! They’re all able to shoulder all these pieces of themselves while also being good at their jobs. It’s wild.

But the point is, the more most people have on their plate, the more grace they give to those around them. That’s the way people want to behave. We grew up as a race, working together in small communities and you couldn’t get away with being horrible to your tribe because they were your lifeline. We’re all so isolated now though, that we’re all seeking that community still, and want to be included in it, and sometimes that ends up being at work.

Work though, isn’t a family. And as much as we want it to be, it isn’t a de facto community (it can be, but it’s not just a thing that happens).

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And this, my friends, is why I have this as my title in slack:

I try to be the ad hoc director of morale where-ever I go because I want to create a community that people want to be a part of. It’s a critical part of our society in addition to making companies better!

The reason it matters to me is that we don’t have these built in communities in the same way we used to. Some still get it through religion, or from hobbies, or from other parts of society, but you have to do work to get to all of those and dedicate some time. Whereas, we’re all forced to work because… capitalism! So if you’re going to have to work… you might as well feel like you’re a part of something and having a good time with people who you care about and who, very importantly, care about you too!

But it’s hard. I want to reach out to people I work with and say “I know this is a really weird and tough day, especially for any of our colleagues in Minnesota” but like I said before, that’s become an inherently political act. I don’t mean “democrats, this is a really tough and weird day” I mean “EVERYONE, this is a tough and weird day”. Everyone. And I mean everyone. We’re all suffering. Either with the facts of our world, or in denial of the facts of our world.

And the community of work only can do so much - I can wear my make billionaires extinct shirt, or any of the other fun shirts that I have (Let Women Run Shit being among my favorites lol), or fly my “tote full of gay shit” tote, or spout my empathy messaging all day, and have that signal my political beliefs… but trying to engage in a real conversation about it, just doesn’t work, because it’s not appropriate.

Because I don’t want to put someone in a position where they’re going to feel bad. As much as I meant that if you support ICE you can f all the way off, that doesn’t mean I want you to feel anything but great. I want everyone to be happy. Which I know is impossible. I get it, I’m just back in my ideal world, and that world, as we already established, doesn’t exist.

There is nothing you can do though to make me not want people generally to have better lives. I care about people. Even if I don’t want to be out in public with them.