This is fine. Probably.
How we carry on while everything else keeps happening
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 was needing to figure out a side quest or two for the week. Something to distract from a burning world. And even typing that feels, ironically, striking.
A side quest.
I mean, I did come up with a few that didn’t require gas money, money-money, or my firstborn child. Stuff like a couple of silly photos from my daily walk shared on social media, extra stickers added to my work notebook (apparently I am the kind of person who needs a designated notebook to keep track of all the employment doings), and a few funny creations, of sorts.
So, progress. I suppose.
But even that came with a strange aftertaste. The absurdity of it. How we carry on while everything else keeps happening.
Maybe that is life, in some form or fashion, in the West. Keep the blinders on. Keep the wheels turning. Keep the machine fed. Somewhere, someone probably needs a fifth house and a third boat while the rest of us debate whether groceries, rent, or the electric bill gets to win this week.
Har-har.
In seriousness, unfortunately, that’s how it feels. Absurd. But what’s the alternative? Sit down in the middle of it all and go mad under the weight of everything we can’t fix? Tell ourselves smaller lies. This is fine. Probably.
Little wonder American mental health continues to decline. We do it constantly. The masking. The blinders. Just to get through each day. You see it standing at a stoplight. Someone off the highway with a cardboard sign, a couple of bags at their feet, looking like life has not been especially kind. As you get stuck at the light with a dozen other cars, two thoughts as the blinders come down:
Don’t make eye contact.
Are they legit?
Neither thought feels good. Both show up anyway. Then you drive off, never to think of that person again. But there’s the ghost of those thoughts. It lingers for a bit.
Only, it doesn’t really stop there.
It’s the same feeling as watching the news on your phone. Bombs dropping. People dying. All while you stand there. Yawning. Stretching. Scratching things. Waiting on your coffee like your biggest battle is whether it’ll be strong enough to get you through the drain of another rubber-stamp work day without sending your blood pressure through the roof.
Or pushing you off it.
It never sits right. You might briefly wonder what you would do in those circumstances. If bombs fell. In your city. Your block. Over your house. Then it’s gone with the first sip of the day.
It feels absurd.
Our world, our reality, is so far removed from reality that it barely grabs us unless it’s right in front of us. A person standing on a highway ramp with a cardboard sign gets dismissed but gas prices jumping just enough to sting. Oh, we are all over that one, baby!
Side note: I wrote that previous paragraph well before gas prices really started popping off here. Any bets on whether we hit $6 a gallon before the end of the first week of May in Ohio?
Don’t get me wrong. Not everyone gets to look away, even here in the West. For some, that reality, that edge is sharpened by daily life, job, home, health, circumstance, bad leaders, and more. It’s only getting sharper and coming for us all.
Perhaps the strangest, most absurd part of this growing hellscape isn’t so far away. It’s what we do to ourselves on the daily, in our jobs, too.
Same feeling. Different setting.
The second we cross into a workspace, something shifts. A mask drops down. Boundaries we would never tolerate in our personal lives get bulldozed without much of a fight. Blinders activated! All in the name of being professional. Or productive. Worthy. Valued. Or whatever word makes it all easier to swallow because it is all about survival.
We let things slide that we would shut down immediately anywhere else.
And for what?
Oh, yes. To prove we’re worth a paycheck. One that doesn’t even begin to cover the needs of a life that keeps getting more expensive, more complicated, more stretched thin.
So what exactly are we proving beyond the right to exist. And who are we trying to convince?
Maybe that’s what the side quests are.
Not distractions. Not really.
Just small, manageable (yet still absurd) things to complete in a world where most problems don’t have endings.
A sticker. A photo. A silly post.
Something that has a beginning and an end, and requires no big explanation as to why. Or prove it is worthy of time and attention. Has value. It just is. It is something that doesn’t ask to fix everything. Not solve anything.
I will say this, the side quests feel human.
Maybe, in the middle of all of whatever this life has become, that’s the one thing we could use more of. You know, to be a little more human, given most areas of our lives have done a great job sucking that all out.
What do you think?
Until next time, my friends—take your breaks, chase a sidequest or two, breathe, and be ready to lead with a little whimsy.
Beth aka The Pushing Ink
Now for some, erm, 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 the occasional 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, pop culture, humor, the occasional absurd sidequest 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.