Many years ago, I asked an employer for a minor process change. It had no cost in time or money, and no consequences beyond the people it would have helped. No zero sum game. It was entirely in their power.

Before I made the request, I shared my reasoning and explained the impact. They were receptive and understanding and wanted to support me.

They didn't change anything. They didn't want to take any action. They had a shallow excuse that didn't check out. They just didn't want to.

The patterns of this are variations on a theme. It gets exhausting trying to explain how these things happen in small ways a dozen times a day, to people who fundamentally don't want to believe that my experiences in the world are different from theirs — and thus becoming themselves yet another variation on a theme, contributing their own resistance to fuel the flames they claim happen somewhere else or differently or just not here

This happens in every place from every person, to varying degrees and frequencies. I accept that. I would like those distributions to shift in a healthier direction, and unfortunately, alas, they are not.

I joke about being an "insecurity princess", but the truth is that I'm generally relatively good at handling insecurity

What I'm really bad at is accepting powerlessness, or rather the inevitability of statistical distributions (beyond individual instances) to align with social power dynamics

I can't fix everything, that's fine. Sometimes I have to put in the work and things don't go my way, that's fine. It's the way it all adds up that I just can't accept.

Burnout leave, day negative 8:
I'm wracked with emotions. Taking extended leave is terrifying for a lot of reasons.

Stepping away from one of my teams is extra-hard for many reasons, not least of all that several of them came to the team because of me, and they'll be reporting to a different manager.

#BurnoutRecovery