Author: Mara Ellison
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Why I Feel Pressure to Appear Morally Aligned at Work
It isn’t just doing good work anymore—it’s making sure I look like I’m doing the right thing. I don’t remember when morality became part of the daily checklist, but at some point I started…
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What It’s Like Working in a Culture Obsessed With Optics
Every interaction feels like a moment that must land “correctly,” even when I don’t know what that actually means. I didn’t walk into my job thinking I would become preoccupied with how my work…
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How I Realized I Was Being Left Out of Informal Decisions
It wasn’t a memo or a meeting — it was the moments I wasn’t invited to that taught me I wasn’t in the conversation anymore. I didn’t instantly notice that I was being left…
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Why I Overthink My Tone in Every Work Interaction
It’s not what I say as much as how I think it will sound. I didn’t notice it at first. Tone was just something I assumed came naturally with words—the invisible quality that made…
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What It’s Like to Work Around People Who Always Talk Over You
It didn’t start as confrontation — it started as diminishing spaces between words, until I barely noticed it was happening to me. I didn’t realize how frequent it had become until I replayed a…
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How Doing the Right Thing Became About Looking Right at Work
The things I think are important feel secondary to the way they appear to others. I can pinpoint a moment, but it wasn’t dramatic. There was no one announcement or email telling me to…
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Why I Avoid Making Eye Contact With Leadership
I didn’t plan to look anywhere but ahead, but over time I realized I was looking *through* people at the top instead of *at* them. It didn’t happen in one glaring moment like a…
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Why It Feels Like I’m Always Being Judged at Work
Even when no one says anything, I can feel the weight of being observed. I don’t remember when it started feeling this constant. But somewhere along the way, work stopped being just about tasks…
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How Being Too Polite Started Costing Me Time
I didn’t notice it at first — the way politeness began to slow me down in ways that weren’t overt, but were persistent and quiet. For much of my working life, I’d learned that…
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What Happens When You’re Always Assigned the Emotional Labor
I didn’t realize how much weight I was carrying until I looked down and saw it in the quiet of ordinary moments. At first, I thought it was just a pattern of being helpful…