When people talk about marriage, it’s usually in a very positive or a negative light. For those who are uninitiated and ignorant and young, they think it’ll be happily ever after (certainly helped by the Disney fairy tales that overrun the minds of young children), riding off into the sunset on a horse that doesn’t smell. For those who have either experienced it themselves or through the dismal relationships of their parents, they avoid it, have heart palpitations over it, and think all marriages will be doomed. Some will just mask their lack of joys more than others. “All the world’s a stage,” as Shakespeare once wrote.

I tend to think more practically about it now. When you’re married, by default you have someone to do activities with. You don’t have to plan a trip and feel self conscious about traveling alone or get lonely pangs. Your partner will be there with you. My parents’ marriage isn’t necessarily the happiest one, but it makes sense. They take care of each other. My dad does all the things my mom doesn’t like to do, and my mom does most of the things my dad doesn’t like to do or isn’t capable of doing. They once had a fervid, romantic love. That’s pretty much disintegrated now, and now it’s about a stability, regularity, the expected. But there’s an inherent trust that they have in each other after all these years. And then, there are those like Hal & Bee, who just fantasize endlessly about killing each other in multiple ways, whether it’s via stabbing, shooting, or just beating to death.

Maybe I’m naive myself. But I cannot fathom the idea of fantasizing about killing my partner in different ways and actually deriving joy from it. The mere idea doesn’t sound very exciting, and I guess I’ve never had a desire to end anyone’s life, even when extremely angry. If you really hate someone so much that you want to fantasize about killing him, then why don’t you just leave him? Or is it the regularity and stability and the perception of being “status quo” by being married that keeps you together?

Although it is more acceptable to get a divorce today than it was 50-60 years ago, I think it’s still fair to say that it’s not something that people look upon favorably. After all, it is a “failure” in life, right? It’s a failure at marriage, a life commitment and vow you made to someone, and thus the end of your shared life together with this other person. It’s still something that people say in hushed voices.

I think it probably helps that people are gradually getting married older, but that’s not a safe guard from divorce, either. I just learned of a colleague in another office who got divorced (for the second time) after her marriage, which lasted only five months. Her then-husband, after marriage, suddenly started imposing gendered responsibilities on her, and even became abusive. It’s terrifying to think that people could change overnight just because a piece of paper was signed and a ceremony ending with a kiss was held.

Maybe nothing is safe anymore — being single or being married. You’re bound to get hurt and betrayed.

I was at happy hour this early evening with five of my colleagues. We’d been trying to organize a team happy hour for ages, but given how flaky New Yorkers generally are, it never really worked out until tonight, and even tonight, we only achieved a turnout of six people.

My colleague who has been the least liked given his messy desk area and bad manners was complaining about his roommate, who we found out tonight has five girlfriends. This guy has supposedly made it clear to each of these women that he is not exclusively seeing any of them, but none of them explicitly know that he’s seeing four other women. He said his friend doesn’t believe in exclusive relationships and doesn’t want to just see one person. Everyone else in the group laughed and passed judgment. My colleague himself said he thought the guy was an asshole, but also admitted that the women probably had low self esteem given that they put up with him and his antics.

Honestly, I don’t really see the problem if the guy is being explicitly clear to all of them that he’s not being exclusive. In that case, there’s no deception. He’s actually being honest and true to himself. It’s their choice to continue seeing him, and it seems that they have no problem seeing him knowing that he’s probably screwing other women. I don’t think that human beings are naturally wired to be monogamous, and I really think it’s something that society has forced upon people. What is it to someone else if this guy has five or ten girlfriends? Who cares if you have two different people you’re having sex with? How does it really affect anyone else’s life? Having strict rules about what is acceptable and not is what makes people fail.

In light of my cancelled work trip, I spent the day working at home, shifting between my dining table and the couch, under my blanket and outside of it. The snow was steadily falling from very early this morning until now. We’re currently almost at 9am and the snow really has not stopped for even a little bit.

I looked down at the ground and saw the white sticking everywhere, and it just made me feel so miserable. I want milk for my tea and Weetbix, but I have zero desire to deal with the sludge and mess that is outside. I do not understand how anyone can get excited by this.

“Snow is awesome,” my colleague said when I told him that I hate snow days. “Yes, snow is awesome,” I responded back. “It’s awesome when I am inside, in my warm apartment, under a blanket drinking a hot drink, watching the snow fall on the OUTSIDE.”

And outside of Manhattan, if I lived in a real house, I cannot even begin to fathom how awful it would be to shovel snow, deal with snow tires and chains, and ice everywhere. That sounds like the most miserable first world life possible. These are the moments when I wished I lived in Southern California and was completely ignorant of this cold misery.

Just when I had a trip to Boston planned for the next three days, Mother Nature decides that my plans are completely irrelevant, and all flights and trains get cancelled… which led to my calling the airlines and the hotel to get my refunds. What joy. And as I am writing this, I have one colleague who is stuck overnight in Toronto due to a cancelled flight (and will not be home until tomorrow night, earliest, and that’s being optimistic), a second colleague who was scheduled to come home from Chicago tonight and his direct flight got cancelled, forcing him to take a connecting flight through D.C. into Newark late tonight. Then, a third colleague is taking a flight to Albany and renting a car to drive him 2.5 hours away. That’s how desperate he was to get home. And, he didn’t have a change of clothes, which probably made him want to go home even more.

This is always something that seems comical and absurd to people who have never lived in snowy areas. Whenever we share this information about meeting cancellations, trip interruptions, and flights getting diverted due to weather, my California colleagues always laugh and think it’s so funny and insane. Yes, it’s funny… when you don’t have to deal with it and have no concept of it ever happening to you.

As one of my colleagues has recently said, San Francisco is having an identity crisis. It wants to be this progressive, hippie place where all are welcome, but we all know that given the cost of living there and now that rent has sky rocketed to level far beyond what Manhattan, it is not welcome to all. And to make matters worse, my dad is reading all kinds of articles that are illuminating on exactly how bad it’s gotten: the level of home and car thefts which have exponentially gone up in recent years, the homeless tents that are set up throughout the entire city, sparing not a single neighborhood, and the worst part? People are actually using their web development skills to build mobile apps now that track where human feces are across the city so that you can either avoid taking a leisurely walk with your dog in that particular area, or remove that from your running path.

When there is an app that tracks where homeless people are literally shitting on your streets, that is truly when you know that your city is going down, down, and down.

My friend, in honor of his 40th birthday, rented out a small theater in the Lincoln Center this evening to showcase all of the films he’s produced. Film production is a side project of his, and to date, he’s produced about six different films. Some are as short as nine minutes long, but the latest one that he’s produced is his longest, and I would say his best. It’s a documentary called Refugee, which is about the Syrian refugee crisis across Europe. It follows a Syrian family as they get separated repeatedly during their process to gain legal status in Germany, and it also showcases the conditions of the refugee camps across multiple European borders.

It was a tragic and eye-opening documentary; I’ve read a lot about the crisis, but the visuals are obviously impactful. It’s hard to imagine someone watching this and not being moved by it. While I was watching it, I wondered for all the people who are not for opening their borders and for all the people who are anti welcoming Syrian refugees into their countries… if they watched this and actually saw the disgusting state of the refugee camps and heard the horrific stories of the people who have gone through them and still sit every day waiting for news, if they would change their mind, if just a little. The lives of these people are literally on hold: they cannot work, the children cannot go to school and learn. They’re just waiting for a new life that they may not even get. And most of them just want to die because of how awful their conditions are. I can imagine that many of them will grow up to be resentful of the harsh conditions they had to endure, and of all the people around the western world who didn’t want to give them kindness when they truly needed it most. It is heartbreaking, and for me, it just feels embarrassing as an American citizen.

My colleague recently adopted a puppy from a shelter, and as he’s been pretty well behaved, the puppy has come to the office twice now. Today was his second visit, and unfortunately for us, he had a “bad boy” moment and peed on the carpet… about two inches away from another colleague’s luggage. He got a bit of a punishment after that. No one like urine on the office floor, especially on a rug.

That reminded me of the time when I was at a previous company, and there was an extremely strict no-pets rule in the office. I had learned that they previously tried to have a “bring your dog to work day,” but it resulted in one dog taking a big dump right in the center of a conference room, and no one knew about it until the end of the day when housekeeping came in and found the big lump under the table. Needless to say, dogs were banned from there on out. The question in my head was…. how did no one ever notice the dog poop — was that conference room not in use for the entire day?

In an early acknowledgement of St. Patrick’s Day, our office manager organized a bunch of traditional St. Patty’s Day treats today, such as Irish soda bread, complete with Kerrygold Irish butter, Guinness Stout and another Irish beer, among other Irish treats for later in the afternoon. Given that our office is usually quite sparse on Fridays, she decided to have the treats on a Thursday.

When the Irish soda bread was put out, a number of people walked by my desk to ask if I had made it. It’s funny because I’ve always thought about making Irish soda bread, and then when St. Patrick’s Day comes around, I always lose my interest and forget about it. It’s not a hard bread to make at all; it’s leavened completely from the interaction of baking soda with the acidity of buttermilk, hence its name. But it’s odd because it bakes up and even tastes like a yeast bread. Everyone thinks it’s some complex and laborious thing to make, but it really isn’t at all.

I’ve only baked for the office a few times since I’ve been here, yet I’ve already developed a reputation for being the office baker. It still feels nice to be remembered and thought of.

The first job I took out of college provided 15 “paid time off days,” 5 “sick” days, and two floating holidays. In total, that was 22 days of paid time off, in addition to weekends (obviously) and I believe 11 national holidays. The second job, for your first two years of employment, provided 18 paid time off days, unlimited sick days (with the rationale that, how can you really control how many days you are sick in a year?), plus national holidays. That was just for the first two years. Once you reached your three-year anniversary, which I did, you get 23 paid time of days, so an additional five, plus all the other days I mentioned. AND, if that wasn’t enough, the second year I was there, they gave all the days between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day off; that’s an additional four days. And THAT doesn’t even include the four “summer days” we got to take between Memorial Day and Labor Day. What does that add up to? That’s 31 days off in a year, in addition to national holidays!! (And, if we really had to get detailed on this… when I left this company, they paid me out three unused paid-time-off days. So, I never even used all my paid time off).

The third and the fourth jobs, the fourth of which I am on now, provide “unlimited paid time off.” We all know it’s not truly unlimited, and that if I decided to take a whole month or two off, I’d probably get fired, but no one really says that to you. The rationale is: take what you need. Be responsible. We are all adults who should be trusted to manage our own schedules, and thus that means managing personal time with work responsibilities. I’d say that on average at my last two jobs, I probably took off somewhere between 22-25 official work days off per year. Because I’ve had the good fortune and privilege of working at these organizations, I’ve never really thought I took off a lot of time. What would I be comparing it to? I’m comparing it to what I’ve had in the last ten years.

So, you can imagine how disgusted I was when I was having a chat with a colleague yesterday, and she said that for her entire working life, which by now spans over 20 years, she’s barely taken five days off per year. For over 20 years, she’s never taken a work-week of five days off? She’s never taken an international trip of longer than a handful of days? Has she even traveled? Does she spend quality time with her young children and husband, or her aging parents? Does she have friends who do anything enjoyable with their lives outside of work?

“I’ve just never wanted to,” she said, shrugging. “I never felt a need.” She’s the kind of person who does work as soon as she wakes up, and as soon as her kids are put to sleep at night, she works until 11 or midnight.

This is the American mentality, that work needs to be your life, that you live to work. I do not live to work. I work to live. And I do not hide that from anyone, including my employer. What is the reason to be like this, anyway? You think you will get a pension? Pensions are nonexistent at companies like mine; the word doesn’t even exist. You think loyalty will get you somewhere or provide you with some sense of job security? Almost all employment contracts are for “at-will” employment, which means that you have the right to leave whenever you want for whatever reason. At the same time, your employer also has the right to fire you whenever they want to, without any cause. So you can work all you want, take only 3-4 days off per year, slave away for a company that will fire you quicker than I can blink my eyes. To me, there’s zero reason to be loyal at a company in the United States. Loyalty gets you absolutely nothing. And employers like it that way. They don’t want to owe you anything. Or, maybe you think you will get more respect for not taking time off, or people will think you are harder working. Yes, that may be true. But it’s also true that people like me will think you have no defined joy or hobbies outside of work, and that you simply live to allow your job to define you.

What I really wanted to ask my colleague is: if you died tomorrow, would you be completely satisfied that you spent the last 20+ years of your life slaving away for corporations instead of spending quality time with your loved ones, or even traveling to learn more about the world, or pursuing some special hobby of yours? This is when you had a choice; it’s not like you didn’t have the choice.

I have moments where I feel very loyal to where I work. Then, they tend to diminish quite quickly when I realize that all I am is a number, another worker cranking out work for some employer who isn’t really going to care or protect me. Part of this is shaped by the fact that I was fired (well, laid off) from my first job during a big downsizing in light of the financial crisis of 2008-2009. I was easily hired, then easily fired. The other part of it is that my dad has always said to me that employers won’t do anything for their employees, and that if you want the life you want to live, you have to work for yourself. “Why should I have to answer to someone else?” my dad scoffed when he opted for early retirement to run his own business. “I’m busting my ass off for some white guy to get rich. You’ll never have the life you want working for the white man, or for any man!” He’s said this to me in varying words over the years.

Unfortunately, I am not as skilled as my dad. I still haven’t found anything that can allow me to be financially independent yet. It does not appear that in today’s day and age that people highly value handmade cards, scrapbooks, or even a homemade meal on their table to the point that they would pay me exactly what I am getting at my day job.

There’s such a thing as working hard and playing hard. It’s unfortunate that this is not quite part of the American capitalistic work mentality.