✏️ Memo #1 — The Accidental Reinvention
I didn’t mean to start over.
I was updating my résumé.
That was the whole plan.
Open laptop. Add recent experience. Pretend “proficient in Microsoft Office” still meant something. Maybe replace a few dead verbs with words that made me sound less like I’d spent the last decade being slowly dissolved by meetings.
A simple task.
Then I made the mistake of asking AI for help.
In my defense, the prompt was reasonable:
“Write a confident, professional CV and cover letter for someone who understands project management.”
The result was frankly offensive.
I sounded magnificent.
Strategic. Agile. Transformational. Like someone who could say “stakeholder alignment” without developing a facial twitch.
I read it twice and thought, who the hell is this woman, and why has she been hiding behind my cardigan?
Then I hit send.
Because apparently, after years of being told not to brag, all it took to unlock my confidence was a robot with no childhood conditioning.
Two weeks later, I was hired.
My title?
Head of C.H.A.O.S. at FFS
Cross-Functional Harmonization, Alignment & Operational Synergy.
Also: literal chaos.
I didn’t know what half the acronyms meant. I still suspect several were invented by someone trapped in a boardroom with a marker and a bonus structure.
But I do know people.
I know when a room is pretending to agree.
I know when a deadline is fake, a plan has no owner, and a “quick follow-up” is actually a cry for help wearing Outlook perfume.
I know when someone says “let’s take this offline” because the online version has witnesses.
I know when two people on Teams are clearly side-chatting about you because their faces go dead in the exact same rhythm.
And I know chaos.
Not cute chaos.
Not “my desk is messy but I’m creative” chaos.
Real chaos.
The kind that hides under expensive software, soft leadership language, and shared-drive folders called:
FINAL
FINAL_final
FINAL_final_USE_THIS
DO_NOT_USE_THIS_USE_OTHER_FINAL
I have spent enough years watching work happen sideways to know when a system is being held together by three exhausted women, one ancient spreadsheet, and a man named Trevor who thinks urgency is a leadership style.
So no, I may not speak fluent startup.
Not yet.
But I know a flaming bag of operational bullshit when someone leaves it on the porch.
And FFS has a full doorstep.
Future Forward Solutions, technically.
Which feels… appropriate.
They call themselves a “wellness-tech innovator.”
I call them a group of people who drink mushroom coffee and hold meetings about “reimagining calm” while actively manufacturing stress in bulk.
Still, here I am.
Midlife. Newly employed. Reasonably moisturized. Deeply suspicious.
Pretending to understand “synergistic wellness deliverables” while quietly wondering if anyone has considered making a fucking list.
I started this diary because FFS is a lot, my browser history is starting to look less like research and more like evidence, and someone should probably document what happens next.
Also, if this turns into a nervous breakdown, I’d like the record to show I saw it coming.
My goals are modest:
Figure out what I actually do here.
Avoid getting fired before my login works.
Find the person who owns the spreadsheet.
Stop waiting politely for life to become more interesting.
If you’re reading this, you probably know the feeling.
When you’re not unhappy, exactly.
Just… underwhelmed.
When your life looks fine on paper, but some private part of you keeps tapping the glass.
When you have a decent job, a sensible coat, a calendar full of obligations, and a growing suspicion that “fine” has been oversold by people with better lighting.
When you open one tab.
Then another.
Then another.
And suddenly your browser history knows more about what you want than your actual life does.
This is me clicking that tab.
Possibly without reading the terms and conditions.
Let’s see what happens.
B.
