Context: Someone in my team has had a rough year. Dealing with her mom’s cancer, to which she recovered. And then almost immediately after, her dad got diagnosed too.

Management’s inital plan was to cut her from the team(!) But we reasoned the fantastically obvious and terrible optics of doing that. So her job is safe. But cuts still needed to happen. It’s not the overall factor to my day/pay cuts but it played a part.

Again, i was fine with taking it. With the mindset of taking a breather. Of course thats not quite how its worked out so far.

So her dad just passed. It aint my dad. But you will still take pause. And think about how all this daily stress and politics that you sometimes let consume you is really only a tiny part of your life.

Was talking to her today. She said she just wished she had more time with her dad. Heartbreaking stuff.

Man. That’s tough.