by salawat | 2026-03-11 22:26:31+00:00
Fuckin' A, nobody? If no one else will, I'll play Senex. First off, welcome to the Game. Everyone else is playing, nobody bothered to tell you. It happens. If I'm reading your post right, one of two things is happening. I'm wasting my time, or I'm helping someone who might be at the threshold of a turning point in life. referred to in depth psychology circles as individuation. Known to the layman as a midlife crisis. "What's that?", you might be asking. It sucks. Royally. Not everyone hits it. Some people go their entire lives without it. You got the lucky number. What's it mean? It means, my friend, you just got a wake up call from the depths of your mind. A part of you is bloody frigging miserable, and will remain so until you figure out where that part is, and fix it. How? That's rather the point of the entire process.

Paragraph 1: Indicates to me an orientation toward extraverted feeling, or really, really unaware of other's actual attitudes/how their behaviors map to the inclinations of the deeper psyche.

Next 3 paragraphs; shocked@ the fact that when people are not face to face, a different side of them seems to manifest that they don't present to you face-to-face. If this hasn't occurred to you before, you probably haven't been paying attention, and should absolutely start doing so, right now. You also are not wrong in this observation, but not entirely right either.

Paragraph 4: Oooh. Ouch. Okay, Corporate faux pas on a couple levels. Sounds like a Director handed you something to do, if it's the FIRST time, it's often a test. Director gave you task. Take materials, make training course. Director probably knows there are errors. Expects you to do one of a few things. The part you didn't catch, is they were trying to measure a couple things. A) Were you willing to ask questions? B) Were you willing to take ownership and optimize? C) Would you correct something you could plainly see was wrong? You took the passive route of least resistance and most face saving (for that Director from your perspective) by just doing whatever you consider "making the training, you didn't specify, but I'm assuming maybe converting a slide deck to worksheets/pamphlets, etc. The formula, is Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

You observed things were off. You oriented toward passivity/face saving. You denied yourself discretion, you turned the materials in with a minimum of actual care. You thought you were being helpful. This other Director obviously prioritized results over how he felt about it, so gave YOUR Director an earful. This is not uncommon. This is priority/optimization mismatch. Could totally be worked out in feedback stage. That requires people being adults. You were clearly not working with one.

Next five paragraphs; Congratulations, it's time for you to learn a lovely word; Enantidromia. Everyone, no exceptions, goes through it. The mask we wear in front of people is not the entire being. We're just trained by society to pretend that is the case. Eventually, ya get old enough and start to realize there's more going on there. You are there.

Last three paragraphs: Alright, see what you wrote there? That came from a part of you. That is the part calling out. It doesn't give a damn about what society thinks should be right for you. it wants you to be you. Everything there about building, and feeling done with corporate and two faced people? That's the part being denied authenticity. The part that blows, you being a family man, and all, is you can't just ignore it. If you do, you're gonna start falling apart. You fall apart, someone in the family is going to have to compensate, you don't want that, right? So you need to work with it now. That part of you is where the oomph comes from. So, take it from someone who has been there; do not try to medicate it away. Do not ignore it. Listen to it. Work with it. It's going to want you to do things you can't necessarily do right now. That's okay. It doesn't have to get exactly what it wants, but ya need to give it something. The more you do, the easier it'll get to find the energy to deal with the world, and the more life'll start to make sense, as that part of you you've clearly been ignoring, gets integrated into your mentation loop.

If you're going through what I think you are, congratulations. You've been handed the blueprint to not drive yourself crazy by someone else who very nearly did, because no one was there to help me out when I went through it. If you're just looking to waste time, which I really don't think you are from your post history. You're new. Not toxic, but definitely not "in" yet. If I'm wrong... Eh, I tried.

Further references: C. G. Jung, look up individuation & his theory of Archetypes. It'll sound like woo. There's a lot of woo based on it, but it ain't woo. Trust me on this one. It'll click with some reading and introspection, and being really, really honest with yourself. Being honest with yourself will at first be hard. Keep at it. It takes active effort. Don't be like me. Take it seriously, get it done. There ain't no going back. Your family needs you.

Good luck waking up, and when ya do, give em all hell for me. I believe in ya.