Yesterday, I met up with a former colleague who got laid off during our big cut last October. He’s currently at another startup and seemingly happy. He keeps in touch with many, many of my current colleagues and basically gets big news of major company changes almost as quickly as I do. I guess that’s what happens when you really like your colleagues when you leave a company. They still keep you in the loop. You’re still an insider even though you’re technically an outsider.

I wonder what it would be like if I left, if I’d have the same level of connection to the people here as he does. We’re at a volatile period of our company’s life. Perhaps we could call it going through the puberty stage — lots of growing pains, a lot of stress and tumultuous changes that we’re not quite sure we’re ready for or able to go through well. I feel committed to making this all work more than I ever have at any other company I’ve worked for, so it would be devastating for me if we suddenly took a downward spiral. It would be as though the one seemingly promising profession I’d ever had just couldn’t work out and make me happy. It would be like a marriage that didn’t work. What would I have left at the end of it? Would any of those relationships with colleagues remain?

Today, the head of our office announced that he is leaving our company. It comes as a semi-shock given that we were very far from hitting our number last quarter, but it still was a crushing announcement nonetheless. You could tell after the announcement was made that the office mood completely shifted. It was somber, upsetting, as though someone had  just died.

In today’s world, it’s easy to think of work as just work. So many people are miserable at their day jobs. They’re there for the paycheck, the benefits, the perks. They don’t have much work integrity or loyalty. And why should they, right? Loyalty in the work sense is pretty much dead given that pensions are almost nonexistent in most jobs, and loyalty doesn’t really seem to pay off from a financial standpoint because it’s easier to get a pay bump by hopping to another company. But I was really upset by the news. I’d come to regard our office lead as not just the head of regional sales, but as the office “dad,” a mentor, and someone who genuinely cared about me and my well being. He’d often check up on me 1 on 1 to see how things were going, ask me what he could do to help, and when there were times I actually did need help, he took action. He gave me advice when I wasn’t having the greatest relationships with certain people in the organization, and he was always deliberate and well thought out in everything he had to say. It feels rare to meet sales people who have that level of empathy, care, and integrity. But he has it. And he’s leaving us.

I saw him after the announcement, and he gave me a heartbroken smile and gave me a big bear hug. “This is not what I wanted,” he said.

“I’m going to miss you,” I said to him solemnly.

“I’m not dying, you know,” he half smiled.

“I can still miss you even though you’re not dead. That’s a normal sentiment, is it not?” I said back.

“Okay, that’s the learning of the day: you can still miss someone even though he isn’t dead,” he chuckled.

This is the kind of banter I will miss, to say the least.

I came to the office early today to listen to a presentation from one of our sales engineers on the role of a sales engineer, how their team supports sales account executives, and what the expectations of account executives are. Today was day two of our regional office’s sales quarterly business review, and I wanted to make sure I was aware of what was going on. In the last few months, we have had a number of new account executives join who seem to be a bit lost in the area of what their role is during prospect meetings, and so there’s been a lot of tension between the sales engineering team and the account executive team.

It was as though all the excitement of the day was in this one session, listening to our head sales engineer discuss all the do’s and don’t’s, then listening to a specific account executive verbally spar with him over things he didn’t agree with. In other words, what he was really trying to say was, “I don’t want to do more work. You can keep doing that because I disagree with what you are saying.” This is the type of behavior that I’ve never respected or liked about sales people — the idea that everyone else does all the heavy lifting, and they can just come in to open and close a meeting. I’ve been lucky to work with many incredible and inspiring account executives at my current company who are not like this at all, but there’s always the bad apples that seem to linger everywhere, no matter where you go.

At least it made for an entertaining morning for me. I love listening to people argue during work meetings. You can see all the tension, aggression, and self-restraint on display at once.

From a sales perspective, my office didn’t do very well last quarter, which means that every single sales person is under immense pressure to massively overdeliver on their quota this quarter. Another reason this is frustrating is because this quarter is our company’s Impact Week, when everyone is expected to participate in volunteering in activities across the world that our .org ambassadors (that’s me) have organized for our respective offices. At the time of our all-hands office meeting today, only one sales person had signed up. Everyone else who signed up was from a post-sales team, including mine.

So our office leader asked me to discuss with the team at our all-hands why it was important and why I wanted as close to 100 percent participation. So I basically explained our company’s goals from a giving standpoint (1 percent of time, 1 percent of equity, 1 percent of product for the 1/1/1 pledge), and also said that I volunteered for personal reasons… not to mention the fact that, every single person in this room today has an immense amount of privilege: we all have steady paychecks, roofs over our heads, food on our table, literal free lunch at work… we have a lot to be thankful for. Check your privilege. Many other people are not that lucky, and if we could contribute just a couple hours of our time to help them, it could truly mean the world for those less fortunate than us.

Somehow after that, I got at least five people to sign up. Guilting people always works to get them to do what they don’t want to do, but they know they should do.

Chris and I both love lamb, and we both agree that Australian or New Zealand lamb is far superior to American lamb. The main reason is that lamb raised in Australia and New Zealand eat what they are supposed to eat — grass. They have land to roam and run along and graze. They can actually act like the animals they are. In the U.S., who knows what access to light and air and grass they have. They are likely primarily fed corn and grain and all the other disgusting things they should not be eating. It also doesn’t help that lamb in general in the U.S. is just so expensive.

So I was excited a couple months ago when I made a Costco trip to see the meat section filled with Australian lamb legs and racks. The price was probably half of what you typically see lamb for at Whole Foods or other supermarkets here, so I picked up a lamb leg and decided I’d finally try out the slow-roasted lamb with homemade Harissa paste recipe I’d had bookmarked for years now. I made my own Harissa paste out of ancho chilies, cumin, coriander, garlic, and other spices and herbs, rubbed the lamb leg, marinated it, and slow roasted it in the oven for five hours, then served it with a garlicky yogurt spread and asparagus. It’s amazing how satisfying a huge hunk of slow roasted meat is at your dinner table. It felt like low effort compared to the satisfaction it brought to us. I’m going to add lamb leg as a “must-buy” item to my Costco list every time I make the trek out there now.

Today, we went back to Elmhurst, Queens, which is my original neighborhood that I lived in when I first moved to New York City almost ten years ago. A lot of my most favorite restaurants are still in Elmhurst, mainly because of the diversity of the cultures and foods, and the low price points, as well. The neighborhood has changed quite a bit since I lived there: the rents and property values have gone up significantly, more potentially trendy bars have opened, and even more interesting restaurants have since opened in the Asian and Latin categories. Some of the things I’ve enjoyed have remained the same, though: my beloved Indian Chinese restaurant, which we had a late lunch at today, the hand-pulled noodle and handmade dumpling shop (which has actually expanded and moved into a larger location); my favorite Chinese supermarkets. More delicious Thai restaurants have opened, and even Thai dessert spots have started appearing, which excites me given that Thai desserts aren’t very well known. It’s comforting to know that I can come back to my original New York neighborhood and still feel at home and find the foods I love.

I met up with my foster care mentee for lunch today to find out that since her foster mom disappeared to the Dominican Republic for a secret vacation away from her and her foster dad and sister that she’s come back depressed and is refusing to leave her bed. My mentee gets cash to buy food, clothes, or supplies that she needs, but she doesn’t have any support system anymore. Her foster dad is always working and rarely home, and her foster sister is no longer on speaking terms with her, mostly because she’s jealous of how well my mentee has been doing in school (she herself dropped out of college and refuses to go back).

I sat there and listened to her tell me about her situation at lunch, and hoped that her social worker could get involved to intervene, but I wasn’t sure what else to offer other than my ear. I couldn’t really intervene myself, and she just needs someone supportive in her life to talk to. I wonder in these situations if her venting to me actually helps her, or if she really does see me as a supportive, role model type figure in her life. It’s hard for me to see any tangible or measurable benefits, but since she keeps messaging me to see me, I guess I must be having some impact, even if it’s tiny?

Today, our office celebrated early Cinco de Mayo with a taco party at the end of the day. One of my colleagues, who has a newfound fascination with the “hottest hot sauces in the world” as he discovered through some TV show he watched. He proceeded to buy a bottle of Mad Dog 357 hot sauce, which is supposedly so hot that some people vomit or have really bad… bowel movements after.

I’ve never really been attracted to heat for the sake of heat in food. Spice needs to complement flavors, not exist solely for the purpose of burning one’s mouth. But I actually do love hot food, and I have a pretty high tolerance for it given the Vietnamese food my mom brought me up with, plus my love of Southeast Asian and South Asian food in general, plus Sichuanese spices.

So when it came down to taco time, multiple guys in my office were crying, red faced and eyed after trying the hot sauce. I had it… and was pretty fine. It definitely burned my tongue and I got a bit hot, but it cooled down after about half an hour, and I was one of two people (both women) who actually was able to tolerate it just fine. It’s comical when a bunch of macho guys start crying over a lick of hot sauce and the women are actually the ones who can handle it extremely well.

At the suggestion of a colleague, I decided to try out watching The Leftovers. It’s an HBO TV show that is based off of a book about how randomly one day, 2 percent of population suddenly disappears off the face of the earth, and the rest of the population is left to cope. Some really gripping images confront you when the show begins: a mother is securing her baby into a car baby seat, and as she hops into the driver’s seat to start the car, she looks back and her baby is suddenly gone. A man is cheating on his wife, mid-coitus with another woman, and just like that, the woman he’s having sex with disappears into thin air. As society is trying to move on and decipher what exactly happened, another minority group joins together as the “Guilty Remnant” to torment and constantly remind everyone of who they lost and how they shouldn’t move on. These people don’t speak, only communicate with writing, and wear white tarpy outfits and smoke. They’re like a cult.

It’s hard to imagine people you love randomly disappearing from your life. The idea not only that you’d have no closure, but that random people smoking and wearing white would constantly remind you that those people left you without explanation would be torturous and bring even more pain than you’d already have. I already feel so uncomfortable when I don’t have proper closure from people in my life now. I’d probably go insane in a world like the one in this show.