{"id":5328,"date":"2022-06-03T11:41:10","date_gmt":"2022-06-03T01:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/?p=5328"},"modified":"2026-09-04T13:36:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T03:36:29","slug":"existentialism-at-the-board-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/2022\/06\/existentialism-at-the-board-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Existentialism at the Board Meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I stayed on<br \/>after leaving the job,<br \/>which, in hindsight,<br \/>was my first mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There I was,<br \/>taking minutes,<br \/>being useful,<br \/>being mature,<br \/>when someone mentioned<br \/>how wonderfully<br \/>my successor was doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Good for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Truly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Delighted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps, however,<br \/>we could save<br \/>the comparative performance review<br \/>until I am no longer<br \/>sitting at the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For a while<br \/>I wondered<br \/>whether the comment<br \/>was malicious<br \/>or merely<br \/>spectacularly insensitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then I got angry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then philosophical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then, naturally,<br \/>I googled<br \/>existentialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Apparently<br \/>the crisis begins<br \/>when we keep giving meaning<br \/>to something<br \/>that no longer<br \/>has meaning for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That seemed<br \/>uncomfortably relevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps the universe<br \/>was not asking me<br \/>to discover<br \/>the meaning of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps it was simply<br \/>suggesting<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I stop taking minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What once felt deeply hurtful has softened with time into something I can finally smile about. This poem is my attempt to find the humour in a moment that, at the time, felt anything but funny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5328"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6584,"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5328\/revisions\/6584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamjak.com\/ma2005\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}