What’s working: checking out lots of books and dvds from the library, and mixing the hard hitters amongst cosy fantasy and queer romance; acknowledging the inconvenient truths to myself and writing about them in my journal; cutting my own hair for the first time, and feeling scared then relieved then giddy at saving myself £80 and like I Could Do Anything; signing petitions; making donations; supporting my local zero-waste business; deciding to wear comfy clothes instead of corporate clothes to a conference next week because my autistic overwhelm will already be high, and this will help; and talking to the fish that live in the fish tank and finding peace in watching them swim.
Finally, like Flo said in a separate comment, I am also Team ‘Silently not engaging with AI at work despite the company being super enthusiastic about it’. It’s on my list of silent and/or anonymous work protests which also involves: supporting my colleagues in various ways against our manager including reporting the manager anonymously; putting up a sheet of union stickers in our work kitchen; submitting awkward questions about sustainability and pay transparency to meetings of senior management/leadership and supporting others when they do the same; being on the rota to take minutes at our union meetings; declining (without a response!) invites to pointless large meetings that are just about presenteeism; sending coded emails to our freelancers to encourage them to charge us a higher fee, when I know we’d otherwise be underpaying them; using my time (that I’ve gained from not attending pointless meetings) to research topics thoroughly and using my budget to pay experts and people with lived experience - both of these make our content better and more representative; using more of my time to talk to marginalised people about getting into my industry (including telling them the truth about its crap pay, so they’re fully informed) and doing everything I can to help them succeed if they decide it’s what they want. I have daily big sighs about corporate life, but finding small ways of sabotaging the greed, bureaucracy and hierarchy does help.
What’s working: checking out lots of books and dvds from the library, and mixing the hard hitters amongst cosy fantasy and queer romance; acknowledging the inconvenient truths to myself and writing about them in my journal; cutting my own hair for the first time, and feeling scared then relieved then giddy at saving myself £80 and like I Could Do Anything; signing petitions; making donations; supporting my local zero-waste business; deciding to wear comfy clothes instead of corporate clothes to a conference next week because my autistic overwhelm will already be high, and this will help; and talking to the fish that live in the fish tank and finding peace in watching them swim. Finally, like Flo said in a separate comment, I am also Team ‘Silently not engaging with AI at work despite the company being super enthusiastic about it’. It’s on my list of silent and/or anonymous work protests which also involves: supporting my colleagues in various ways against our manager including reporting the manager anonymously; putting up a sheet of union stickers in our work kitchen; submitting awkward questions about sustainability and pay transparency to meetings of senior management/leadership and supporting others when they do the same; being on the rota to take minutes at our union meetings; declining (without a response!) invites to pointless large meetings that are just about presenteeism; sending coded emails to our freelancers to encourage them to charge us a higher fee, when I know we’d otherwise be underpaying them; using my time (that I’ve gained from not attending pointless meetings) to research topics thoroughly and using my budget to pay experts and people with lived experience - both of these make our content better and more representative; using more of my time to talk to marginalised people about getting into my industry (including telling them the truth about its crap pay, so they’re fully informed) and doing everything I can to help them succeed if they decide it’s what they want. I have daily big sighs about corporate life, but finding small ways of sabotaging the greed, bureaucracy and hierarchy does help.