The Angry Eyebrow
Sometimes the biggest changes arrive by disappearing
Welcome to Pushing Ink, where we navigate the broken world of work, detour into pop culture, and occasionally embark on whimsy-filled side quests… among other hot topics
I noticed something the other day.
I haven’t had an angry eyebrow since starting this “new” job over two years ago.
The angry eyebrow was a marker of how much stress I was under in my previous job(s). An autoimmune flare so bad it would show up at the inner corner of my left eyebrow. A bright red swath of angry skin that no amount of icing, creams, or box breathing could calm.
It was bad.
I’d fight the urge to rub it what felt like a thousand times a day. Only the rim of my glasses hid the worst of it, as makeup wouldn't last long enough to dampen the glare. The latter reminding me of King Neptune's bald spot in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.
I don’t entirely blame the job(s) I had at the time. There were other factors, including being deep in the throes of perimenopause, people-pleasing, and trying to find my footing in a world that seems more than ready to close the door on peeps like me..
I guess time does have a way of soothing wounds more than we’re willing to admit. Maybe with age comes a certain level of grace. Or perhaps it’s simply that after a while you’re too exhausted to keep spending energy on trivial things. (A topic I’ve shared before, along with losing one’s filter.) You know, the things that get your dander up or kick your autoimmune system into such high gear that you end up with an angry eyebrow.
I noted the lack of angry eyebrow at the same time something else happened.
For what felt like the first time in ages, I caught myself rehashing a conversation. Turning it over in my head. Wishing I’d said something different. Replaying it from every angle.
Such moments used to be my specialty. My Olympic gold medal, if you will. I did it so often that besides learning to read a room in record time, I learned it was easier to stay quiet than risk saying the wrong thing in the first place. So as to avoid rehashing.
It felt so odd to be doing it again, the rehashing, that I actually laughed.
After a few more minutes of mentally rewriting the conversation, finding it harder and harder to keep up the footage, so to speak, I rolled my eyes and groaned, Give it up, Royer!
And I did.
Past-Beth would have replayed that conversation all evening. Maybe even for a couple of days if it was a really good (code for bad) one. Instead, after a few minutes, I was done. Not because I’d solved anything. I simply hadn’t the energy to keep replaying it. That realization stopped me for a moment.
It has been a long time since I’ve done that, the whole rehashing, reliving conversations. It felt not just good, but GREAT. Not only because I’d kicked an old habit, but because I hadn’t even realized how much time had passed since it stopped being my immediate go-to, my default.
Maybe that’s how healing shows up. Not with some grand announcement or a life-changing revelation, but with absences.
The thing you no longer dread.
The conversation you no longer replay.
The symptom that quietly packed its bags and left without bothering to wave or say goodbye.
Not that I am upset about THAT. I mean, no more angry eyebrow!
We’re so busy measuring what we’ve accomplished or accumulated that we rarely notice what we’ve stopped carrying. Maybe every now and then it’s worth taking inventory of those things, too. Because sometimes the biggest sign your life has changed isn’t something you’ve gained.
Sometimes it’s something as ridiculous as an angry eyebrow that quietly departed and never came back.
What do you think?
Until next time, my friends—take your breaks, chase a side quest or two, breathe, and be ready to lead with a little whimsy.
Beth aka The Pushing Ink
Now for some humor
About me
I’ve been fascinated by the broken world of work (and other random hot topics) for as long as I can remember. My first job was at 12, delivering newspapers—an early lesson in unpredictability, absurdity, and human weirdness. Since then, it’s been one head-scratching employment adventure after another.
I initially went back to school late-ish to become a divorce counselor, but life nudged me toward what actually excites me: poking at the quirks, snobbery, and chaos of work itself. I earned a bachelor’s in Applied Psychology (work psych) in 2014 and a master’s in Organizational Leadership in 2018.
I’ve spent decades bouncing in and out of newspapers (city beats, courtrooms, the whole nine yards) and wandering through the nonprofit world’s strange corridors. Now, with Pushing Ink (a former newspaper column turned passion project), I write about leadership, people-pleasing and the tyranny of niceness, along with pop culture, humor, the occasional absurd sidequest, absurdism, and more.
Still very much a work-in-progress like myself, you can find me online under The Pushing Ink on YouTube and other social channels (minus the former bird app), where I keep experimenting with whimsy, insights, and chaos.