It has been a heavy week at my workplace. There was a highly visible and controversial firing that happened early in the week. We all saw it but nobody talked about it except in whispers. Yet the fear and sadness that rippled out from this spread through the office as the week went by.

Today, my team was marched out into the parking lot by our supervisor, where she told us how disappointed she was in our tardiness and insubordination. Hours earlier, she had pulled me aside and warned me of the upcoming ambush. She told me that other team members had been coming in late. Upper management saw this and told her she needed to crackdown, so she was obligated to conduct a meeting with the whole team. I appreciated her honesty and that she let me know that I wasn’t the target. But still, it was brutal to hear her demean my peers. She sounded like a harried mother, saying with rageful exasperation, “Since apparently I have to babysit you all, I guess this is the way it has to be from now on!” There were new rules to follow, new procedures put in place, and further restrictions placed on our autonomy. I looked at the face of my newer coworker during the meeting and she genuinely appeared hurt and shocked by what was being directed at her.

Outside of work, I’ve been interviewing for new jobs. This can make my days feel fragmented and weird. I will be at work, enmeshed in the drama and stuck in this swamp of discontent. Then I will rush home for a Zoom interview, and when I log off the problems of the day feel as though they were one-million miles away. They are simply no longer a part of my consciousness. Instead, I find myself daydreaming about new potential futures. I will stroll through the sunshine, fantasizing about what life might look like, should I get this new job. Even if the interview turns out to be less than spectacular, I always feel warm and accomplished afterwards. It feels like everything is lighter and that my life and potential are opening up.

Then the day next day I am back to the grind again. Stuck in a place with restrictive rules, frowning faces and slumped bodies. While I am grateful not to be the one that the ire is directed at (for now) it sucks to watch people both yell and get yelled at. When I come home, I feel mentally drained even though the work I have spent the day doing is mindless. I have been finding myself getting caught up in scrolling on my phone in bed. When I am feeling ambitious, I’ll maybe sit down and read a book.

My work is taking a toll on me, my energy, and my mood. But I am okay with it, because I keep reminding myself that this is just for a season. Eventually it will pass because storms always pass. And something will follow it, and whatever follows it could be much better than this. Or not. We don’t know what comes next, but we know it’s not this. So, I just need to get through these days, and try, when I get the energy, to break through to the other side.