*taps mic* Is this thing on?

And if there’s nobody there to listen, does it matter?

Maybe that’s the point.

I don’t know if anyone has ever seriously followed this stupid blog of mine that I started mid-divorce to rant about men and politics (and to be clear: men are still terrible and – against all odds – the political landscape has gotten worse).

But it’s probably okay nobody ever followed this thing. Sometimes I just like to yell into the void in a way that could be googled.

So here I am, on the verge of another major change in my life that’s got me caught up in my feels. Under normal circumstances, it’s not that big of a deal. There was a time a few years back I changed jobs every year while I clawed my way up the corporate ladder in big tech, working for major players in the Bay Area. Which is all well and good until the stress makes you passively suicidal.

Still tolerable, though, right? Who hasn’t cared if they ever get hit by a bus at some point? That’s what I’d tell myself to cope.

But add in things like my mom dying, all my beloved pets getting old and kicking off, getting diagnosed with a form of OCD that makes ambiguity feel like a Jabberwocky is chasing me, and gaining employment by the most toxic/beloved tech company to ever grace the fucking planet, and you quickly learn you need physical therapy just to learn how to walk without chronic pain again.

Ask me how I know.

The good news is I can walk again after two years of business coaching, OCD treatment, and PT. I’m even back to riding my Peloton, which was a huge source of sanity for me and I greatly missed when my hip basically fell off.

The bad news is… for some reason, I’m sad.

I know. What the fuck?

I’ve been at this company for three years. They treated me like shit. I had all the accountability without authority and I’d be working 18-hour days more often than not. At least they paid me well and I’m walking away with nearly a half mil in stocks, I guess.

I’m just not sure it was worth it. Yeah, I made money. I bought a new, amazing house. I have three dogs and three cats. I can travel the country going to yarn festivals and seeing my friends pretty much whenever I want. I have a number of side hustles, including a YouTube channel, and I’m producing a number of vibe coded apps that might not be lucrative, but serve a purpose.

But I have legitimately been miserable because of this job the entire time I was there. I knew 30 days in that I wanted to crawl under my desk and never come out. And now it’s been three years. I can’t even reduce why I hated it into a single thing – the toxicity just became a part of me, like radioactive primordial soup. It puts you in a place where you can settle into dysfunction and functionally survive, and it starts to feel okay.

So it’s terrifying to think about changing jobs now, especially since it’s still in tech / cybersecurity. I could be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. But I also think I got so used to what I can expect out of my toxic job that now my OCD/fear of the unknown is making me loop and, effectively, shit my pants.

The fun part? It’s dredging up all sorts of memories about every other time I’ve felt this way in my life, and I fucking hate it. All the times I’ve been made to feel like I’m not enough, like my opinions, feelings, or education don’t matter, that I’m worthless while giving everything I have to whatever it was. This feeling encompasses everything from my first marriage where I was never a good enough wife (read: hausfrau), to a four year long overseas “situationship” where I was gaslit into thinking nothing about it was real including how much I loved him, to every complicated relationship that followed, to my mom who’s now fucking dead so good luck resolving those issues. Then this job where I only found out how much I was valued and respected after I resigned (which I had to do THREE FUCKING TIMES because they wouldn’t accept it – I felt like Chandler trying to quit the gym, like Jesus Christ).

The only reason I can think of for this spiraling – other than this is just how my OCD brain works apparently – is that this is the first time in ten years I’ve actually felt “safe” enough to sit back and reflect on how I even got here to begin with. Like I am overall doing great on paper. I have intentionally spent the past 10 years rebuilding my life, and rebuilding myself, and despite a lot of mistakes made along the way, I finally have what I wanted.

So why am I in a place where I’m letting all this history upset me?

I think it’s because I remember everyone who let me down when I needed help. I spent years wrestling with whether there’s a reason you need support, or if you only have yourself – and finally landed on the latter. I’m not happy about it, and it’s not something you want to believe. You want to think you have a supportive network that wants to see you succeed, or even help you succeed, but I was neglected every step of the way. No, I don’t expect people to be perfect, nor do I expect them to drop everything and help me survive life – people only have so much capacity and life can be tough right now – but I was literally screaming for someone to choose me in any capacity for ten years and nobody did. Including my jobs. Including my relationships. Including my friendships. Including my own family many times.

And the fun thing about neglect is it teaches people how to live without you. Which also means I’ve pulled away from work. I pulled away from my ex-husband. I pulled away from that situationship in the UK years before it even ended (and maybe that’s what fucked it up, I don’t know). I pulled away from my family a LOT, although there’s been repair there. And now I’m sitting here realizing… I got to this better place all by my fucking self. And that should be celebrated. Instead it makes me really sad.

I’m building and participating in communities. I’m creating friendships. I have a core group of people I’d die for. I think that matters today. But I grieve for the yesterdays I didn’t have that.

Yes, this is the dark place my brain goes to when I’m CHANGING MY FUCKING JOB. I’m so high maintenance. No wonder people hate me.

(Everyone loves me, too, which is a fucking curse, I promise, because people want to be around you all the time without choosing you – it sucks).

I wonder if this will get indexed for Google or become some fodder for AEO now. I hate the internet.

And in that same breath, I’m gonna go figure out how to migrate my app to Vercel because I’m going to set my hair on fire if I ever have to see an orange cloud again.