At 42 And Post-COVID, I Think I Tolerate People Less And Less Now
Pretty accurate illustration of me there, eh?
A year ago today, I turned 41. (That’s how math works.) I wrote a very “eh” post on that day. A couple of years back, I turned 38 and wrote a wholly self-indulgent post about that. In fact, if you’ll let me be an aggrieved white male for a second (“What exactly are pronouns?”), what had happened on that 38th birthday is I was working at this marketing agency, right? They had a big deal about decorating employees’ desks for birthdays. I came in and nothing was decorated. (Usually it happened the previous night.) At the time, I had been working there about seven weeks and came in 3–4x/week, so I was figuring I was worthy of a few balloons. Nope. I mentioned it to someone midday and they said “Oh.” I think I got balloons the next day (not my birthday) and about six months later, I got told in a review that someone thought I was “aggressive” regarding asking for balloons on my birthday. I probably was, and I don’t shrink from that. But I mean, if you do it for everyone else, and you don’t do it for me … how am I expected to feel? Warm and cuddly? I dunno.
