That time of year again...

 ...The annual sales conference.

My team did a lot of work for it this year, but there wasn't much to do on-site, because there are three and the first one was in Tokyo. So all the wrinkles I have ironed out over the last few years were already done, and I didn't have a lot to do. I am glad it is finally over and we can get back to business as usual.

This is the Oculus, it has nothing to do with work except I walked thru here to get the train home yesterday.

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I'm feeling weird, and I don't think it is because of any one thing but a combination, from personal-individual to broad-global.

Sometimes when I'm around work colleagues and everyone is talking about their lives etc I feel very distant, and it is hard for me to fight the feeling that life really has gone shitty for me in a lot of ways.

And here is the point where everyone invalidates and dismisses themselves (and gets invalidated/dismissed by others) from expressing their feelings by acknowledging how others have it worse, or bigger problems, or don't compare or whatever. It's not helpful. I have to live my life in my circumstance and so does everyone in theirs. I can have my feelings. And I have to remind myself that I do, actually, have to contend with some serious stuff. 

I have had a lifetime of my feelings being dismissed; and so I have to consciously not dismiss myself.

Anyhow, the demographic of my job is all at-minimum 4 year college educated people, often higher education, and people who were raised in relative economic comfort. Long Island, CT, and NJ suburbs people (and also global international). They talk about their kids, their parents, their childhood vacations, their current travel, their cousins, their siblings, their houses.

I am the only person on my immediate team who doesn't have a strong 2 income household, who doesn't take at least 1 international trip a year and doesn't have a spouse and other family. In June 2023 in a team meeting we went around and told about our summer plans... everyone had cool trips abroad and I had....... eye surgery.

One person on my team has a 1 year old and is moving, and their spouse is leaving first... she's dreading having to take care of everything alone for a week and a half until her mother comes to help her.

And everyone's reaction to that week and a half is eek that's gonna be tough! ... which it will and I love my team and my co-worker and it's not her fault that I'm so triggered.

How is my "that's normal" the shittiest version of things? Being dumped while pregnant and doing everything alone, just surviving? No one helped me with my baby. And I went back to work full time (not remote back then!) when she was 6 weeks old.

It's hard and yes I'm triggered and it's no one's fault and I don't talk about my stuff in the work environment.

My "normal" is a sister who disappeared 12 years ago (and who was really mean anyhow), a father who doesn't care if I'm alive or dead who I haven't spoken to in years... the last time I reached out he talked to me for 6 minutes before making an excuse to hang up..., and a mother who is so mentally ill and hostile no one can have any kind of relationship with her.  She'll die alone in her hoarded house and who knows how long it will be before someone finds her. I have 2 aunts, one I get along with but she'll be 85 years old soon, and the other who wants to shove "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ" down my throat and can't relate at all to one single aspect of my life so I need to keep distance from that.

I am very on-my-own.

This creates, I have discovered, a certain mindset over the long-term.

It's not great nor are the effects on time on it.

I'm tired. Exhausted.

And I'm starting to notice- very subtly- I'm tired of fear and anxiety around the future, money, retirement, rising housing costs, and yet-more looming corporate layoffs.

*******

Well, I can't do anything about any of it and I have to get through my days the best I can.

Tomorrow I have been told to take the day off so I'm meeting up with Grace and we're going to the Winter Dance Showcase at LaGuardia.