Random piece in May

I was seriously ill a while back—worse than I’d ever been. It left me completely drained. But in that broken state, I started seeing life differently.

there are so many thoughts I need to get down—scattered, half-formed, urgent. But I haven’t yet found the right order to piece them together. So for now, I’ll just let them spill out, uneven and unfinished. I’ll make sense of them later, when I’m ready to begin the real telling.

Piece 1: I need to create

I need to create. Like, actually create. This whole… cog thing? Not working for me. And I’m a good cog, you know? Like, weirdly good. They hand me these vital-but-pointless tasks—the stuff everyone else avoids because, I don’t know, it drains souls or whatever—and I just do them. On time. Perfectly. That’s what I do. I turn off the part of my brain that wants to scream, I become this task-zombie, and I just complete things.

But here’s the thing—I can’t keep doing that. I think part of me still has this delusion that work should mean something? Like, beyond the paycheck, beyond the two-point-five-weeks-of-vacation-a-year thing.

…Or maybe work is the wrong place. Self-worth shouldn’t be sought in work at all. Maybe my discontent was misguided from the very beginning.

Piece 2: Strategic rudeness

This week, my facade cracked—for the first time in my professional life, courtesy abandoned me. Always cleaning up other teams’ messes just to keep projects moving. This time there were obvious solutions, clear ways to avoid the pitfalls, yet some people insist on leaping headfirst into disaster.

Truthfully, it doesn’t take much time. What burns me is their entitled expectation. I never signed up to be the office martyr, nor do I buy into that “collaborative spirit” corporate nonsense. Clock out on time, collect just enough to survive—that’s the entire job description.

I definitely rolled my eyes in that meeting—no idea how many caught it. In that moment, something snapped. God, I crave a space where I don’t have to monitor every microexpression.

But here’s the thing: I don’t regret it. People should know how I feel. They need to understand that I, too, have a breaking point. And targeted rudeness? Surprisingly effective stress relief.

Piece 3: Language

I recently met someone from the company who’s learning Mandarin—and honestly, his Mandarin is really good! At the very least, he can handle basic communication and even a bit more. Somehow, I found his progress really motivating.

Language is fascinating. I recently read about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which suggests that the language we speak shapes how we perceive the world. If something doesn’t exist in our language, we struggle to think about it—or may not even notice its existence at all. In a way, things we can’t describe with words might as well not exist for us.

Sometimes, I have complex or abstract emotions in my mind, but words can’t capture them perfectly. The moment I try to describe them, the feeling gets distorted somehow.

Language structures the world, but non-linguistic information might be closer to the truth. Maybe that’s why we have music and art—to express what language can’t fully convey.

Anyway, circling back to my original thought: I want to improve my French. I had to pause my studies for two months because of an illness, but now I’m determined to pick it back up and reach a decent level before I go to Paris.

And yes—I finally got my visa appointment in July! I can’t wait!