2013 Is Haunting Me
Ghosts of burn-outs past
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2013 Is Haunting Me
There are two growings-up. There’s the one you do by the Gregorian calendar, celebrating birthdays and milestones like drivers licenses and the first time your parents let you go to the mall alone. We basically know what’s coming, like a winding board game path with spaces you hope you get to skip over. The game ends after college and that point you’re just a little blue game piece aimlessly roaming on the edge of the coffee table. Because the other version of growing up happens professionally, it’s the development of your work self, and this kind of maturation is the goddamned Wild West. No one tells you anything, because if you know what’s going on you stop allowing people to take advantage of you. Growing up as a child benefitted your parents, who let go of demanding jobs like changing diapers and driving you places as you matured into handling that stuff yourself. Growing up properly in the professional world doesn’t benefit your boss, because when you do the demanding jobs yourself, you cost more. You threaten their authority by gaining your own. So we’re left fumbling in the professional dark with no one around to care when we bump into walls, because they remember their own bumps and think we deserve to suffer, too. So we “grow up” locked in a scary void, fearing not having health insurance, until we learn enough, or get mad enough, to turn on some light.