It was a late Thursday night in June, and I was walking with my best friend trying to explain why I was so unhappy.
I hadn't even been at my new job for three months. And I was miserable.
On paper, everything should have been fine. It was a good company. The mission was meaningful. The work was supposed to matter. I was surrounded by smart people who deeply cared about what they were building.
And yet, every day, I was just miserable.
I would open my computer and feel my body and mind resist. I would look at my calendar, my tasks, my meetings and feel this strange internal resistance that I couldn't explain. It was a feeling I had never experienced before.
I've always been ambitious. I like achieving things. I like doing good work. I like being someone people can count on.
This is what I've always chased in every area of my life, including whatever corporate job I've had.
But, here at this company, I couldn't seem to access that version of myself. The version of me who was excited. Driven. Ready to prove herself. I was dragging my feet on everything.
Opening my inbox felt like a chore. Small tasks felt overwhelming. Things I normally would have jumped into suddenly felt impossible. I knew this wasn't who I was but I was terrified it was who I was becoming.
That walk with my best friend that summer night was the first time I really started to understand what was happening. I told her stuff I hadn't admitted to anyone because, honestly, it felt embarrassing.
I hated the way this company tried to create connection.
The company's mission was centered around student mental health. They created curriculum for schools designed to help kids build emotional awareness, resilience, and connection. A noble mission.
The irony was that my own experience inside the company was making me feel less like myself than almost any other job I'd ever had.
A huge part of the company culture revolved around something called "energizers." The idea was simple: before meetings we'd do an activity designed to warm everyone up, create an atmosphere of collaboration, and make people feel connected.
It was a "practice what you preach" kind of thing. The same activities they taught kids were incorporated into the company culture.
Virtual meetings. In-person meetings. Company events. Everything started with an energizer.
My first week on the job I flew to Oregon for an event. There were around 50 people there that I had never met, including my CEO.
To kick off the event, we did an energizer. This one was basically musical chairs, except instead of chairs you dance around the room. When the music stops, you talk to the person closest to you and ask them a more-than-surface-level question. Something like:
"Who in your life makes you the happiest and why?"
So the music started playing. Everyone stood up and started dancing.
I watched my CEO, someone I was meeting for the first time, boogie down and around the room. People were laughing, spinning, swinging their hips side to side. Everyone seemed so happy.
And there I was, standing in the back of the room, trying to force my body to participate. The best I could do was nod my head and move my feet slightly side to side.
That was it.
Then the music stopped. Someone next to me turned and asked, "so, who in your life makes you the happiest and why?"
For some people in the room, this was probably great. For me, I hated it.
I'm a private person. I don't naturally open up to strangers. I especially don't like forced vulnerability.
This energizer lasted for 20 long, miserable minutes.
This was a company trying to create something good. I understood that. It was a good, purpose-driven company that was surely making a positive impact in lots of people's lives.
So why did it make me feel like I was pretending to be someone else?
The amount of times I had to force myself to dance, participate, and answer personal questions with strangers made me wonder: who have I become? How did I get here?
On that evening walk, I told my friend probably ten different stories like this. Moments at this company where I felt completely outside myself.
We laughed about it. Then, she started sharing stories from her own career. Moments where she had done things at work that felt completely unlike her because she thought it was what she was supposed to do.
Her cringiest story was about her CEO. A bunch of people were quitting because he kept demanding insane, unattainable quotas that created a very unhealthy workload and dynamic.
The company demanded you to be in office from 8am-5pm every work day. Around 11am, mid-mass exodus, he made it to the office, moseyed on over to the sales department, and threw a fist in her face to pound it, and said, “you having fun!?”
No Chad, none of us are having fun.
Yet, she pounded it. Like she had a choice?
By the end of that walk, I finally started understanding what was happening.
The problem wasn't the energizers. Or giving people fist bumps.
The problem was that I was spending every day trying to become someone I wasn't. Someone I didn't even like. Fake.
This is what some workplaces quietly (sometimes loudly) ask us to do. They ask us to adapt. To fit in. To become the version of ourselves that succeeds in that environment.
And sometimes that's completely reasonable. Every workplace has its own way of doing things, and being part of a team means adapting.
But there's a difference between stretching outside your comfort zone and spending every day trying to be someone you're not.
So we learn how to survive. We learn how to say the right things in meetings. How to participate in the culture. How to adapt to the way things are done.
Maybe sometimes we stay in the wrong environment because we need the paycheck. And slowly, without realizing it, we start trading pieces of ourselves we actually like for security.
So we tell ourselves we'll get used to it. That this is just what work feels like. That maybe we're asking for too much.
And somewhere along the way, we forget to ask: am I actually building the life I want?
Or, am I just getting better at surviving one I don't?