"kemback to da young and byutipul u"
Hey friend, thanks for opening! Happy Halloween weekend! Some personal updates, boyfriend soft launches, etc. Hope you find something useful here! -K
Some urgent work changes afoot, with a new acronym too-RTO, which stands for "Return to Office".
Sigh.
After a year and a half of working at home, we're now piloting "the future of work", a hybrid variant that has half of a department's work force reporting in person at the office, while the other half works from home, then vice-versa.
I'm honestly bummed--for all my complaints about virtual meetings being interruptions to the writing flow, I actually have grown to like this work-from-home routine, and quite frankly I've spent the last 18 months or so optimizing it. Not that it was asked of me, but I now have a full-blown, dual-monitor-mechanical-keyboard-microphone-stand setup on a wide-ass wooden table--actually a WFH feature I cannot replicate at the office, especially when we're expected to keep desks clear after every work day for health and safety reasons (which make up 99% of my anxiety, tbh). I mean, you know me, I'm your "Jump? How High?" kind of guy, but jeez. Make it make sense.
IN ANY CASE: I still have to prepare for it. I spent the past few days inventorying my work clothes if only to check if they still fit (thank god some of them still do).
And then, I finally made an appointment with the neighborhood barber.
https://twitter.com/thegshift/status/1454384547483709440?s=20
My last haircut was end-January 2020, which was right before the lockdowns. Which explains how my hair got this long. Before the pandemic, I've never really had the patience to grow it out, so I'm actually surprised it did get this long! I remember they used to tell me nagtatampo na siguro buhok ko because I always made it a point to cut it short all the damn time. WELL GUESS WHAT we're in good terms pala hahaha.
But yeah. When I got to the barber shop, Kuya was puzzled--Anong gagawin natin ma'am? Good thing I had my reference photos from January. Antagal lang ng gupit haha sorry Kuya. And then, when he'd chopped off a considerable chunk of it, he was like, "MA'AM! Kayo nga, natatandaan ko na." Humaba lang buhok ko, di na ako nakilala e every quarter halos ako nagpapagupit before hahaha.
Anyway. Welcome back, hair! Now onto the rest of this adventure.
From the internet
The Art of the Boyfriend Soft Launch via The Atlantic - I want a version of this but with people gradually coming out as lesbians: "First I cut my hair really short after sporting a longer do for much of my in-school life. Then you see me posting selfies of me trying out various plaid polos in Uniqlo." skskskskwsk BUT I DIGRESS, because: YES so much yes.
When someone talks about “soft-launching” their new boyfriend on Instagram—when they type out the phrase, instead of merely engaging in the behavior—they’re signaling awareness of, and also mocking, the demands that are now made of even nonfamous people online. We use plenty of other corporate-sounding words in just this half-joking way: We call videos of our loved ones “content”; we joke about inconsistencies in our “personal brand.” When I refer to surprising posts from friends-of-friends as “plot twists,” I’m really making a ruder accusation: They’re showing narrative inconsistency, which hints at a poorly run PR operation that is throwing everything at the wall.
I've found myself using "comm plan" far too often to refer to otherwise personal comms, and it's indicative of how performative everything is these days, especially online, and how more and more, that's already the imperative, instead of being a nice-to-have.
Why managers fear a remote work future via The Atlantic - Bringing this back because, relevant. Stark stats:
94 percent of employees surveyed in a Mercer study reported that remote work was either business as usual or better than working in the office, likely because it lacks the distractions, annoyances, and soft abuses that come with co-workers and middle managers. Workers are happier because they don’t have to commute and can be evaluated mostly on their actual work rather than on the optics-driven albatross of “office culture,” which is largely based on either the HR handbook or the pieces of the HR handbook your boss chooses to ignore.
This weekend's meme, for our faux long weekend feelings:
https://twitter.com/awards_watch/status/1452024454284906496
And also: I have been thinking about this for a WHILE: oh no it's an unembeddable TikTok video with Jungkook in it, but really--you're welcome
Anyway--that's it for this week's letter! Salamat sa pagbabasa. Stay safe and hydrated!
XO,
K