Office Days, Ranked by How Dead You Feel Inside

Monday. Present, not participating. The body arrives on time. The mind filed its resignation over the weekend and has not withdrawn it. Not laziness, just Clocked In. Checked Out.

Tuesday. Exceeds expectations, bar set underground. You got through Tuesday. You may have eaten a vegetable. By any reasonable metric this counts as thriving. When Did Functioning Become an Achievement? is not a complaint. It is a certificate.

Wednesday. Audit in progress. Midweek is when the EMI notification arrives and you remember that Equated Monthly Installment and Emotions Messing Inside are, structurally, the same debt. Both come due regardless of how the week is going. EMI covers both forms of repayment.

Thursday. Seen, not responding. You read the message. You typed a reply. You did not send it, because sending it means the conversation continues, and Thursday does not have the bandwidth for continuation. Read Message. No Reply. is the most honest status update you will give all week, closely followed by Emotionally On Mute, for when even reading feels optional.

Friday. Out of office, effective immediately, internally. The laptop is still open. The Slack status still says active. None of it is true. Out of Office (Emotionally) filed the leave application Thursday night and did not wait for approval.

The weekend coda. By Saturday you have achieved what the startup world calls MVP status, Minimum Viable Person, and by Sunday night, Airplane Mode. Permanent. is not a setting. It is a personality.

Five days, five graphic tees, one HR complaint that will never actually get filed.

Related reading: Not A Machine: The Radical Act of Being Human, on the other side of the same Monday.