If you asked me before the pandemic and baby if I would ever consider a fully remote role, I would have given you a grossed out look and said I never would consider it. Why would I want to be alone all day? I’m a social person. I love seeing and talking to people all day long. I love having that comraderie and driving office culture. I love the free lunch (well, I used to have that), snacks (hehe), office supplies, and all the other little freebies and perks that go along with working at a tech company. But once the pandemic came, Pookster was born, and pumping breast milk became part of my life, my perspective on working from home and having that level of flexibility totally changed.

Now that pumping is over, I still feel conflicted about working in an office once again. It’s not that I have the opportunity to given my current company has no New York City office, but the thought at this moment really does not entice me at all: the commuting, the dressing/getting ready every morning, not having as much flexibility with my own non-work life. I don’t have anyone keeping tabs on me to see when I am coming in, going out for breaks, or leaving for the day. There are no spies watching or reporting back to some losers who care. There’s no office gossip. Going into an office every day feels very… ugh. I got this question a lot while at kickoff last week, and my general answer is… no, I don’t want to be in an office again. I’m happy with what I am doing now and the flexibility I have.

I generally am pretty open about my brother’s death. I openly share that he died ten years ago, and that he died from suicide. Well, I kind of have to be open if I am fundraising for an organization called the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), and I say that I fundraise in memory and honor of my big brother. There’s really no way to get around that, is there?

I’ve been very fortunate and privileged in all these years fundraising. Family, friends, colleagues, ex-colleagues, acquaintances, even totally random strangers who have never met me in real life have donated money to my fundraising drive because they’ve been touched by Ed’s story and my desire to share it. Many of the people who have donated have donated year after year, since year 1. They don’t have to do it, but they do. But part of the reason I know so many people donate is because of how much detail and information I share regarding how Ed died and how he suffered. And so with all that detail means that people do have a sense of what I went through, and they then feel like they can openly share their own struggles, whether it’s with themselves or their loved ones, with me. And while I feel privileged that they feel they can come to me to share their most personal, vulnerable stories… it’s honestly a lot of emotional labor and burden for me. I’m then associated with mental health and suicide prevention in their minds, and so I’m someone they they feel comfortable sharing with when no one else “gets it.” I “get it,” right, because I lost Ed through suicide. So I’ll “get it” with my colleagues.

So I sat there and listened to a few stories of struggles of friends, family members, and children over the last couple of days at SSKO. And while it was touching to be remembered and thought of, it was also… tiring. It was already tiring to be around 400 of my colleagues nonstop for two days since I work from home, but then to add this additional layer of emotional labor just left me feeling beat. I like it when people come up to me to share what new food they’ve tried or made because they were inspired by me; that gives me energy. Having these conversations around mental health and suicide attempts, while I hope they are helpful… they drain me. I want to help, it feels good to help. But it’s definitely exhausting. Everything has its price.

On Monday, the company I have been working at for about 2.5 years had a layoff. Ten percent of my colleagues got let go. This company, in its entire 13-year history of existence, had never had a reduction in force before. And it was pretty obvious one was coming: we didn’t hit our Q4 numbers, spend has been pulled way back, especially on work travel. I was just waiting for when it was going to happen… and wondering if I would be impacted. Our CEO gave a cryptic nod to it on Sunday night, and then on Monday morning, he announced on Slack that there would be a layoff later in the day: if you were impacted, you’d get an email within 10 minutes of the all-hands meeting ending. If you were not impacted, you would get a calendar invitation to the all-hands meeting the next day. So after the meeting ended and we all got off Zoom, we sat there for ten minutes, wondering if we’d get cut. As a defense mechanism, once I saw the Slack message in the morning, I had just assumed I would get laid off. Because… if I assume the worst, then I couldn’t possibly get too upset, right?

I guess that’s how I deal with layoffs now. Because I’ve gotten laid off twice before, fired once (yep), and every single company I’ve ever worked at has had endless layoffs where I was unlucky and “lucky,” I always just assume the worst. I cannot even count how many layoffs I’ve seen happen across the last 15 years I’ve spent working full-time; I’ve lost track. I feel sorry for the people who think that their individual contributions are so great that they couldn’t possibly get selected. That type of naiveté should only exist if you’re super inexperienced and in your early 20s; after that, that type of thinking is just flat out stupid and ignorant. We’re all disposable. Even the CEO of a company is at the mercy of their board or shareholders. At the end of the day, we are all just a number.

Was I happy I wasn’t affected? Obviously. Who wants to look for a new job in this miserable environment where pretty much every company is reducing its staff and cutting everywhere? But I honestly just felt numb in general. There’s really no such thing as “job security” anymore, anywhere.