Tag: #TherapyWouldBeNice
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant goal-setter and spreadsheet victim Every January, normal people lie to themselves with New Year’s resolutions: “I’ll run every day. I’ll stop eating sugar. I’ll finally learn French.” By February, it’s over. Corporate life does the exact same thing, except it calls them OKRs — Objectives and Key Results — and wraps…
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant novelist of corporate fiction Performance reviews are supposed to measure your work. In reality, they’re creative writing assignments where everyone pretends. You pretend you’ve “grown.” Your manager pretends they’ve “coached.” HR pretends this whole charade matters. It’s fiction — bad fiction — written under fluorescent lighting. The Self-Assessment Saga The first…
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant reader of financial fantasies Quarterly reports are corporate fanfiction. That’s it. That’s the whole piece. Every three months, companies release a 40-page PDF filled with charts, buzzwords, and “narratives” that are less truthful than a Wattpad vampire romance. Shareholders nod, analysts pretend to understand, and somewhere an intern cries over Excel…
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By Ken Hollow, unwilling event planner and professional scapegoat Corporate retreats are already a nightmare. Trust falls, awkward icebreakers, and “vision alignment workshops” designed to make you cry in a hotel ballroom. But now? Add a fox spirit influencer with a flair for theatrics, and you get the kind of chaos that makes HR spontaneously…
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By Ken Hollow, trapped in an infinite feedback loop of buzzwords If I die young, bury me in an Outlook calendar invite. Cause of death: “Just circling back.” My tombstone will read: “Per my last email.” Corporate jargon has many crimes, but none so insidious as the eternal loop of circling back, touching base, looping…
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By Ken Hollow, survivor of 4,000 Slack pings and counting I have seen the face of hell, and it is a recurring calendar invite labeled “Quick Sync.” There is no such thing as a quick sync. There is only the slow death of my soul as six people talk in circles for 45 minutes, then…
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By Ken Hollow, podcast producer by blackmail Let me start by saying: I don’t hate podcasts. I hate this podcast. The podcast that was never supposed to happen. The one my fox spirit client, Nana Vix, manifested into existence with a combination of soft threats, velvet cooing, and one very cursed crystal mic she claimed…
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By Ken Hollow, freelance chameleon and reluctant trend hopper Every Monday, I check my analytics like a responsible content creator who pretends to enjoy numbers. And every Monday, the platforms collectively decide I am no longer the person I was last week. Last week? Oh, I was a motivational lifestyle guru. The week before that?…
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By Ken Hollow, algorithmically ghosted and emotionally contagious You ever post something, watch it tank, and then immediately question every life choice that led you to this moment? Yeah. That’s me. Twice a week. Every post dies.Every reel flops.Every story reply is a spam bot or someone DMing me about their course. Meanwhile, the only…
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By Ken Hollow, professionally lost and brand-consistent There was a time when I had a job title. Graphic designer. Easy. Understandable. You say it and people nod politely and think of logos and Helvetica. Then came the pivot.Then came Instagram.Then came the bios. Now I write things like “Creative strategist for emotionally burnt-out brands,” and…