Fingers hovered, backlit by the blue glow, tracing the familiar curve of the ‘Enter’ key. The clock on the monitor read 1:49 a.m., a time reserved for secrets. A prompt, raw and detailed, bloomed in the input field, a vision about to be conjured from the ether. There was a strange tension in the act, a confusion of creative excitement mixed with an unfamiliar blush, as if a private thought, previously locked away, was being made real, instantly, undeniably.

This isn’t a new story, not really. We’ve always conjured images in our minds, spun intricate narratives in the dark, whispered desires to the silence of our own consciences. For centuries, our fantasies were the most private of territories, accountable only to ourselves. Now, a machine can visualize them, instantly. And with that immediacy comes a fresh set of questions: Is it wrong to be attracted to something that isn’t real? Is using AI for fantasy a form of cheating? The immediate, visceral recoil many feel is not because AI has somehow infiltrated our relationships, but because it’s forcing us to confront the very nature of desire itself, to ask if there’s a proper, ‘real’ way to explore the landscape of our own minds.

I’ve found myself grappling with these very questions, sometimes even missing crucial signals from the real world, like realizing my phone was on mute after missing ten

The smell of stale coffee mingled with the metallic tang of unwrapped garments. It was Saturday, 7:08 AM. My children were already giggling in the living room, their cartoon voices a muffled counterpoint to the click of my camera shutter. On the bed, 38 freshly laundered items lay waiting: each seam, each label, each tiny flaw demanding attention. I measured an inseam, then a bust, then a sleeve, all while a tiny voice in my head whispered, ‘This is for our vacation. This is for freedom.’ The vacation felt not just distant, but like a mirage shimmering on the edge of an impossibly vast desert.

This was supposed to be the dream, wasn’t it? The ‘fun’ side hustle. The empowering path to financial independence, to ‘living your best life’ by monetizing your passions. The internet is awash with narratives of people escaping the 9-to-5, building empires from their spare bedrooms. And for a glorious 18 months, I bought it. Hook, line, and the whole expensive sinker. I transformed my evenings and weekends into a second shift, convinced I was investing in my future, in a life of choice. What I actually invested in, I slowly realized, was another job, often harder, less predictable, and without any of the built-in protections of my full-time work.

The Tyranny of ‘Behind-ness’

The tyranny of the ‘fun’ side hustle isn’t just about the extra hours. It’s about the emotional erosion, the insidious way it leaches joy

The fluorescent hum of the conference room felt particularly grating that afternoon, sharp as a sudden drop in temperature. It was the kind of meeting where the air hung heavy with unspoken dread, a peculiar humidity that made my socks feel perpetually damp, even though they weren’t. We were looking at what was supposed to be our shining new app interface, a digital beacon of Eurisko’s forward-thinking approach. Instead, it was becoming a monument to collective anxiety.

The cursor blinked, a silent accuser. Or was it just my throbbing shoulder, stiff from sleeping at an awkward 95-degree angle, making everything feel more accusatory? Three IDE windows sat open, tabs sprawling across two monitors, but the only truly active thing was the tiny, frantic dance of my mouse, nudged every five minutes, just enough to keep Teams from going ‘Away’. Another 35 minutes till the build finished, maybe 55. What was I *doing*? More accurately, what was I *performing*? It felt like a bizarre theatre, a one-man show where the only audience was a digital algorithm designed to confirm my presence.

This isn’t a story born from the pandemic, nor is it a lament about remote work. Remote work didn’t create this particular pathology; it just held up a mercilessly clear mirror to a fundamental flaw in how many organizations understand and manage knowledge work. Before, the problem was masked by physical presence. You were at your desk, so you must be working. Now, with the transparent cruelty of a glowing green status dot, the illusion shatters. Managers, and even some employees, conflate visibility with productivity, presence with purpose. It’s a performative loop, incentivizing busyness and the digital equivalent of pacing anxiously around the office, rather than meaningful output.

I once found myself caught in this very trap. When I first transitioned to managing fully remote teams, I’d unconsciously monitor those green dots. My logic,

The ‘Radical Candor’ poster in the breakroom is giving me a headache again. A glossy, corporate-approved declaration of openness, slapped above the coffee machine. Yesterday, I watched Sarah from product strategy get systematically sidelined for daring to suggest that maybe, just maybe, the Q3 rollout timeline was, to put it mildly, an exercise in wishful thinking. Her “radical candor” was met with polite nods, followed by a sudden increase in her “support” tasks and a notable decrease in actual decision-making power. The irony hangs in the air, thick and cloying, heavier than the cheap coffee brewing behind me.

This isn’t just about bad management; it’s about a deeper, more insidious form of corporate gaslighting. We’re told, constantly, that “we’re a family,” even as emails from our manager ping at 10:11 PM, requesting “quick thoughts” on a presentation due at 8:01 AM. We’re celebrated with pizza parties after working 61-hour weeks, while the HR department, in an act of breathtaking agility, lays off an entire team over a 15-minute Zoom call, citing “strategic realignment” and “optimizing for future growth.” The smiling faces on the career page, gathered around beanbags, feel less like a promise and more like a cruel joke.

The more a company broadcasts its amazing culture, the more it’s likely compensating for a cavernous void.

A genuine culture isn’t a marketing campaign; it’s the quiet hum of trust,

The blue light of the iPad hummed at 11:35 PM, casting a stark, digital glow across my face. I toggled, again, between the two numbers. Mine, a dispiriting $475,555. Theirs, my neighbor’s, a baffling $485,555. Just last week, mine had ticked down $2,555, a silent, algorithmic judgment against the new roof I’d painstakingly installed just 45 months ago. Theirs, the house with the tired chain-link fence and the perpetually overgrown hydrangeas, had somehow climbed $5,555. The screen shimmered, a portal to a valuation logic that felt increasingly alien, even insulting.

I remember arguing this exact point, exasperated, with a friend who swore by AVMs, convinced their data was infallible. I lost that argument, not because I was wrong, but because the sheer weight of perceived data often trumps inconvenient truths. It’s like telling Nora S.-J., the sand sculptor, that her magnificent, ephemeral castle, built with 5,555 grains of carefully chosen sand, is worth the same as a child’s crude bucket mound. She understands texture, wind, the fleeting beauty of a perfect tide, the unseen forces that shape value. The algorithm, however, sees only ‘sand structure’ – a crude approximation.

There was a time, I’ll admit, when I first bought into the digital oracle. The early days of these Automated Valuation Models (AVMs) felt revolutionary, a promise of instant, objective truth, free from

The echo of the CEO’s claps still vibrated, a hollow sound against the polished chrome of the conference table. He’d just finished an impassioned speech about ‘family,’ about how “we’re all in this together, pulling the rope in the same direction,” while the taste of lukewarm coffee from the sad little machine in the break room lingered, a bitter reminder. Just six days prior, an email-a cold, impersonal digital decree-had informed a tenth of that very ‘family’ that their presence was no longer required. No personal goodbyes, no severance beyond the legal minimum, just a swift, clean cut.

It felt like trying to assemble a complex bookshelf, only to find the critical cam locks missing, leaving a gaping, unstable void where support should be. You push and pull, trying to make it fit, but the fundamental structure is compromised. That lingering frustration, the one I carried from wrestling with those particleboard instructions, felt eerily similar to the sentiment buzzing-or perhaps, dying-in the room.

The Weaponization of Belonging

We crave belonging, don’t we? It’s deep-seated, probably encoded in our primal wiring from when survival literally depended on the strength of the tribe. Companies, or rather, certain leaders, understand this. They weaponize it. They dangle the idea of a ‘work family’ not as an invitation to genuine mutual support, but as a subtle demand for unconditional loyalty, for sacrifices that