[1052] Dually Noted

I hate it. I hate it so much. I genuinely believe one of the most dangerous and destructive behaviors you can engage in is false praise. I think playing nice onto absolutely catastrophic ends is how you get the phrase, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” You, in your impossibly naive and idealistic fantasy intend to do something “nice” or “good.” You don’t know what those things are. You literally can’t define what’s good nor often care what someone would consider nice. Nonetheless, you’ll keep on paving.

Perhaps you’ve experienced a reply-all email chain. Someone you’ve never met got promoted, married, had a birthday or a baby. For the next week, until someone like me comes in to sour the mood, you will get dozens of emails at random times on and off work hours with, “CONGRATULATIONS!” and “I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!!!!!” It’s mentally fucking exhausting. You don’t know when your computer or phone dings that it’s another piece of the well-wishing bullshit train. If you’re me, you get to microdose stressful reactivity.

I can be pretty flagrant and ambivalent about rules and social niceties. I’ve walked a long road from leading emails with, “With all due respect.” I still can’t bring myself to swallow completely the idea that I’m always and forever meant to carry on with the crazy-making behavior as though it’s polite or professional. It’s lying. It’s cruel. It’s wasteful and distracting. It’s training yourself to form insincere expressions, feel nothing in doing so, and walk away insanely self-righteous and entitled when someone points it out. The only times I’ve ever been invited to talk to my supervisor’s boss are when I didn’t complain through the chain of command or violated the façade of how much care is truly there.

Groups doesn’t give a fuck about me. Most capitalist institutions under nearly all circumstances don’t give a fuck about you. They’ve automated your birthday card in the mail, if they recall it at all. They don’t pay you enough. They don’t offer benefits that cover anything. They are trying to retain and placate. A huge part of that is swallowing the propaganda. It’s occurring to me now as I have the overt compulsion to write this instead of the notes I’ve been procrastinating on, I’m ever more incensed by attempts to hijack my language or the desire to correct my behavior. My message “wasn’t well received,” after all. Obviously, it’s not their job to help, understand, or respond to critical feedback. Obviously, it’s mine to ensure they feel comfortable and protected and correct.

It literally will make you crazy. You will not be able to utilize your words, find your agency, or feel as though you even own the thoughts, infinitely bizarre and random as they may be, flowing through your head. You are in the wrong if you think it’s wrong of me to want to protect my attention and sanity from your baseless and insincere praise. You want to know how I know it’s baseless and insincere? WE’RE A REMOTE FUCKING ORGANIZATION. I haven’t met 10 people I work with, nor 15 of my 160+ caseload for more than seconds at a time, and when you give a fuck, you do more than project to a thousand people one line or one word of praise.

Unless, of course, that’s the new normal. That’s how you're going to practice and conceive of sincerity. That’s fucking miserable, a joke, and a mockery of bothering to say anything at all. You have to click TWICE to get to reply-all. You’re not even quickly rushing to tell that person, and that person alone, how excited and happy you are for them. No, you’re ensuring everyone sees you. You’re doing so days later, because you didn’t know or care what they were doing on the actual wedding day. You didn’t set an alert so information about them would make it to you no matter what. You lazily and emptily piled on with performative pizazz.

I haven’t been this reticent to get my notes in in a long time. I haven’t felt that “getting called to the principal’s office” dread in longer. I’m counting the days until my next vacation. I was imagining packing up my shit and quitting yesterday over what I had yet to learn our meeting was going to be about. Why? What changed between a few days ago when I was driven and energetic and thinking I could power through work, house stuff, and larger projects? A visceral and painful reminder of the edge I’m always walking and trying not to cut myself on. Combine that with putting Hussain up for the job and him managing to get fired in 3 weeks, who knows how to best conceive of the consequences there for my clout or sense of his general competence.

Part of me feels like today is going to be one of the longest days I’ve had in a minute. I’ve already started to do more house organizing (in lieu of sitting down and focusing on notes.) The pit in my gut is wide open. The tingles are shooting up from my balls. I can’t tell if I have to shit or am just so full of theirs it feels like mine.