Going Corporate

Going corporate means discovering that your laptop weighs exactly the same as your self respect on a Monday morning.

Going corporate means wearing a shirt that somehow judges your posture before anyone else does. Going corporate means realising there are seventeen kinds of meetings and none of them involve finishing anything. Going corporate means saying circling back even though your inner child is silently screaming why are we looping. Going corporate means pretending to understand acronyms invented five minutes ago by someone who owns a reusable water bottle the size of a toddler. Going corporate means replying all by accident and feeling your skeleton briefly leave your body. Going corporate means nodding thoughtfully in calls where your brain has taken a short holiday. Going corporate means keeping a favourite pen like a tiny emotional support sword. Going corporate means treating the office coffee like a toxic relationship you keep returning to out of habit and hope. Going corporate means sending yourself emails so you don’t forget things and then forgetting to read them anyway. Going corporate means using phrases like touch base even though no one wants to be touched or based. Going corporate means developing a work laugh that sounds slightly borrowed from a stranger. Going corporate means discovering that your calendar has more control over your life than astrology ever could. Going corporate means taking a walk at lunch like a prisoner who has earned five minutes of supervised fresh air.

Going corporate means finding unexpected sweetness in small moments. Going corporate means realising that even in fluorescent lighting people can be warm. Going corporate means discovering colleagues who slowly become friends and then quietly become your people. Going corporate means growing without losing the softness that makes you human. Going corporate means proving to yourself that you can navigate the wild maze of meetings and inboxes and still stay gentle. Going corporate means learning that you can be both professional and deeply yourself. Going corporate means choosing to move through the world with kindness even on the days when the coffee tastes like despair. Going corporate means finding hope in the middle of everything confusing and loud. Going corporate means remembering that you are allowed to be happy.