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Tetris

You fire up Teams for the 87th time this week, watered down Dr. Pepper in one hand, the other already slamming the mute button on the fourteenth ping since 8:03 a.m. Your Outlook calendar is a Tetris board on nightmare mode, blocks stacking faster than you can manage, your panic rising with every new brick. You are one block from the top… and then some absolute legend slams a 4:30 PM quick sync sideways into your last gap. Game Over. Tomorrow’s blocks are already loading. You take a deep, soul cleansing sigh, paste on that, I'm fine, everything's fine smile for the camera, and mutter the sacred corporate mantra “We just have to get through this busy season.”


Except, that “busy season” is a myth. A beautiful lie we tell ourselves. It started as a quick sprint before a launch, then bled into post launch chaos, metastasized into hiring frenzies, mid year goal panic, year end review purgatory, reorg roulette, audit anxiety, budget bloodbaths, and now pre fiscal planning. Seriously, who even makes this shit up? It's 2025, people. We have been operating in "just survive this crunch" mode since before the pandemic, then because of the pandemic, and now post pandemic. This isn’t a season anymore, it’s the corporate climate. Our permanent state of being is chronically underwater with a side of existential fatigue.


That cheerful, "someone called with no warning" Teams song now triggers a full-body flinch and a quick doom scroll of your email to make sure you didn’t miss something critical. Then there's the 300 person meeting chat, blowing up because someone innocently asked "how are you doing?" and you're suddenly bombarded with 300 emojis and gifs ranging from rainbows and sunshine to falling off a cliff levels of despair. Your status glows "Available" green, but your soul? Your soul is locked on "Do Not Disturb" red. We all know this ain’t normal. And yet, it’s the only normal we’ve got.


Just get through it, is the professional equivalent of I am fine. We whisper it like a prayer, a desperate mantra to soothe the screaming void inside. We parrot it in meetings, in awkward elevator silences, in group texts fired off at 10:52 PM. Even our Out of Office replies sound like hostage notes "Technically on PTO but will be checking messages periodically."


You know you are deep in the forever grind when your PTO feels less like vacation and more like sanctioned email triage duty, when a canceled meeting sparks sheer joy like finding a forgotten $20 in your winter coat, when getting vacation approved comes with a smiley face emoji and nineteen frantic follow up messages about coverage, and when you weep tears of pure, unfiltered relief not because something’s done, but because it got kicked to Q3.


Maybe we stop pretending the mythical quiet period is lurking just beyond the next milestone. It’s not coming. The only true peace involves throwing your laptop into the nearest large body of water. But until that glorious day of digital liberation, we gotta take back some sanity. Take your lunch! Learn the sacred power of No! Normalize rest like your sanity depends on it because it does. Log the F off without apology. And for the love of all that is caffeinated, DO NOT REPLY TO EMAILS ON SUNDAY. Getting ahead is a trap. It just resets the expectation that you are always on.


Next time someone says, We just have to get through this busy season, nod politely. Smile. But inside? Know this, you are not alone. We are all strapped into this spreadsheet hamster wheel, collectively gaslighting ourselves that next quarter will be different.


Corporate Survival Tip #389, When the miracle happens, when the meeting vanishes, the chat falls silent, and your calendar coughs up a glorious, uninterrupted 27 minutes of white space, do not question it. Do not poke the bear. Do not check if it's a glitch. Grab it and run. Disappear. Vanish. Treat it like found money or a secret glitch in the Matrix. Because the instant you dare to breathe, to savor that fleeting moment of peace? BAM. Someone will notice. And they will schedule a follow up. With prereads and action items. Definitely a shared OneNote. Probably breakout rooms. Protip: Mark that freed up time as busy or tentative immediately. Block it like Fort Knox before anyone else claims it. Guard that empty slot like it’s your last oxygen tank. Sneak the peace.


Go now. And may your Wi-Fi be just unreliable enough to grant you asylum.

ღ Chi


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