Author: Mara Ellison
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How Office Politics Turned Every Decision Into a Guessing Game
I thought politics was about power plays. Instead I found it was about uncertainty — a persistent fog around every choice. At first I didn’t see office politics as something that directly affected my…
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Why I Avoid Political Topics at Work Even When I Have Opinions
I thought speaking up when I had something to say was natural — until every opinion felt like a risk I wasn’t prepared to take. There was a time when I believed that having…
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Why I Stopped Hoping Things Would Change at Work
Hope once felt like a quiet optimism — now it feels like an expectation that always gets deferred. There was a time when I believed things could change if enough people cared, if enough…
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What Happens When Silence Is Interpreted as Disagreement
I thought silence would be neutral. Instead, it became a space others filled with assumptions I never voiced. In the early days of my job, silence was unremarkable. It was just a pause between…
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What Happens When Everyone’s Just Trying to Look Busy
Effort became performance, and motion became the evidence of value — even when nothing meaningful was happening. There was a time when work felt like forward motion — that sense of doing something that…
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How Political Conversations at Work Made Me More Quiet
I didn’t notice it at first — the way everyday conversations began to shrink until silence felt like the only comfortable space left. There was a time when I spoke freely in the workplace,…
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Why Staying Neutral at Work Feels Risky Now
Neutral used to mean quiet and unremarkable. Now it feels like a position people try to read into, like a signal that needs decoding. I used to think neutrality was a quiet refuge—a way…
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Why I Get Frustrated When No One Follows Through
It’s not the missed deadlines that wear me down — it’s the sense that follow-through has quietly become optional. I used to think my frustration with follow-through was about control. Maybe I was expecting…
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What It’s Like When Everyone at Work Assumes You Agree Politically
It wasn’t loud or dramatic at first—just a quiet assumption I hadn’t signed up for but that began shaping every interaction. I remember the first time I noticed it clearly. Someone said something that…
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Why I Stopped Talking About Politics at Work
It didn’t feel like a choice at first. But eventually, silence started to feel safer than clarity. There wasn’t a single moment that made me stop. No outburst, no confrontation, no HR warning. Just…