I find myself to be a reasonable person, but I am human. And somehow my work ambitions are clouding my judgment on whether being a soulless robot is the ideal natural state. This has been a difficult personal week for me. My uncle died. I’m American but I live abroad in the Netherlands so I’m away from my parents, I spoke to my dad today and broke into tears on my lunch break. After, I had a work call (no camera) about another boring work issue and I was sort of lightly antagonized for not handling things in that situation as well as I could have. And I didn’t snap, I held back my tears and I just said “okay, mhm, okay – mhm”. I was clearly upset but keeping it in, and I know she noticed. Yet I’m the one feeling guilty. My manager is not a bad person, she’s kind and fair – but yeah she came off condescending and I sort of shut down. And now my anxiety has me pondering this whole thing at 21:00 because I feel bad that I was weird on a work call. And that’s just what this whole corporate bs does, doesn’t it? It eats you up and I feel like my self worth is tied to how well I do at work.