I so very badly want to find a way to "chart my own course" these days. This corporate stuff is just awful. It's all so transactional and soulless and generally unpleasant.

I'm fine with transactional if I'm shopping at the grocery store. Somewhere where I spend 8+ hours a day, I kind of want to have some human connection with people.

Some days, I really miss where I worked in Italy. We weren't "family", or even "friends" really, but we were all friendly and got on well and people seemed to care about one another. And importantly there was none of that fake-ass "family" crap from management - we were all there to do a job and do it with pride, but without all the 'rah rah' BS.