---
title: "Unexpected Variables"
description: "On suddenly carrying too much, being seen by the wrong person at the right time, and not knowing what to do with that."
pubDate: 2026-04-04
tags: ["personal", "work", "reflection", "healing", "life"]
category: "reflection"
audio: true
---

Some weeks arrive with more variables than expected.

You plan for a certain kind of day.  
You know the work. You know the pace. You know the people.

And then, quietly, the configuration changes.

---

## Suddenly, Everything Is Your Problem

I work in tech support - Helpdesk.

Hardware. Laptops. Phones. SIM cards. Loaner devices.  
Accounts across multiple platforms and software.  
Microsoft everything. And then some.

But also: improving how things are documented.  
Writing documentation that did not exist yet.  
Making plans for better workflows, cleaner processes, fewer things that only lived inside someone's head.  
Learning Azure. Learning DevOps. Learning what the business actually is, how it moves, what it needs.  
Learning the people. Who to ask, who to loop in, who knows what.  
And somewhere underneath all of that, learning things for myself too.  
Becoming someone slightly more capable than the person who showed up a few months ago.

The entire surface area of "things that need a human who is paying attention."

There used to be more of us handling that.

Now there is me.

I should mention: I have been here since August.  
A few months.  
Still learning the building, still learning the people, still figuring out which coffee cup is mine.

And now the whole thing is mine too.

Not permanently. Everyone is clear about that.  
But "not permanent" does not come with a date attached.  
Could be weeks. Could be longer. The timeline is open.

So for now, every ticket, every request, every "quick question" that is never quick.

At first it felt like standing in a room where all the lights came on at once.

Too much to look at. Not sure where to start.

But something shifted after the first few days.

When you are the only one, you stop waiting for someone else to decide.  
You just decide.  
Things move. Problems get solved. And somewhere in the middle of it, you realize you were more ready for this than you thought.

I will not pretend it is not a lot.

It is a lot.

But it is also, strangely, clarifying.

---

## The Company Itself

Something I did not expect when I started here is how different this place actually is.

It is my first real job. My first real company.  
I have no baseline to compare it to except things I have read or heard.

But even without that reference point, it is obvious that this place operates on its own terms.  
It does not feel like a template of what a company is supposed to be.  
It feels more like something that grew into its own shape. Decisions made by people who actually thought about them. A culture that is genuinely its own thing.

The company itself is a kind of project.

And I think that is part of why I feel so loyal to it, even now, even when the situation is heavy.  
I am not just doing a job. I am inside something that is still becoming what it wants to be.

That matters to me more than I expected.

---

## The People Who Show Up

I have not been doing this alone.

My team leader has been present in the way that matters: not hovering, but available.  
Checking in without making me feel like I am being monitored.  
Trusting me with the full weight of this while still making it clear the door is open.

That kind of support is easy to underestimate until you have seen its opposite.

But there is someone else.

Someone higher up. The kind of person whose attention you do not necessarily expect to land on you. Who has been unexpectedly, consistently, there.

He told me he thinks I am capable of more than my current role suggests.  
That he is glad with the way I am looking at this situation.  
That he appreciates how positively I feel about the company, even under pressure.

I did not know what to do with that at first.

Compliments from people you respect land differently than compliments from people who are just being polite.  
They sit with you longer.  
They make you wonder if the version of yourself they are describing is the one you actually are, or the one you are still becoming.

---

## The Unexpected Variable

Here is the part I did not plan for.

In all of this. The adjusting, the long days, the figuring-it-out. There is this one thing.

This one variable I did not write into the equation.

He shows up in small, consistent ways.  
A good morning even when I am clearly trying to disappear into my work.  
The kind of person who actually listens when you answer a question, instead of just waiting for his turn to talk.  
Who goes out of his way to show you things. Projects, ideas, small corners of what he is working on. Not because it is useful, but because he wanted to share it with you specifically.

He is tall. He is kind in a way that does not perform itself.  
The sort of calm that makes a room feel slightly less chaotic just by being in it.

And the way he sometimes looks at you —

Not the way people look when they are being polite.  
Something quieter than that. Something that lands differently.

I genuinely do not know if there is anything there on his side.  
I am not sure I trust myself to read it correctly right now.

But I notice it. Every time.

---

## The Avoidance Strategy

Here is what I actually do.

I avoid him.

Not half-heartedly. Genuinely. Strategically.

If I can send a Teams message instead of walking over, I send the Teams message.  
Requests, questions, updates. Everything that could technically be a conversation becomes a notification instead.

If I can sit somewhere else, I sit somewhere else.

I move. I find another spot. I make myself hard to reach in the small quiet ways that do not look like anything from the outside.

The problem is that it does not work.

He finds me anyway.

He will sit down next to you, completely naturally, and show you something he is working on. A project. Something the company is doing that makes you realize again how strange and interesting this place actually is.

A meeting room, for instance.

Just a meeting room. Except apparently not just a meeting room. Something is happening to it. Something genuinely cool, the kind of thing that reminds you that this company does not do things the ordinary way.

I am not going to say what. That part stays here.

But I will say that sitting there, looking at whatever he was showing me, I completely forgot I had been trying to avoid him.

He is continuously in meetings, continuously busy, continuously with more important things to do than pay attention to one person at a helpdesk.

And yet somehow he keeps smiling.

That is the part that gets me.

He is always smiling.

Not in a forced way. Not in the way people smile when they are performing professionalism.  
Genuinely, quietly, like he finds something worth smiling about in most things.

And I find that a little terrifying.

Because it is very hard to avoid someone who makes you feel glad they noticed you.

---

## The Complication I Was Not Expecting

A few months ago, something ended.

A relationship that had been significant. Real. The kind that reshapes parts of you quietly and permanently, even when it is over.

I wrote about that here before. About the silence after love, about carrying without clinging, about what remains when something meaningful stops.

I thought I knew where I was in that process.

Still healing. Still finding steadiness. Not looking for anything new. Not ready.

And then we ended up talking. Really talking. About exactly that.

About what happened. About the relationship that ended. About the kind of grief that does not announce itself loudly but just sits with you quietly in the background of everything.

He listened. Actually listened.

And it felt good in a way I did not fully expect and still do not fully understand.

That is the part that makes this complicated.

Because now I have to ask myself an uncomfortable question: do I feel something for him, or did I just need someone to talk to? Am I drawn to who he is, or am I drawn to the feeling of being heard by someone at a moment when I really needed it?

I do not have a clean answer.

I am still healing. That part is true.  
And I know, I genuinely know, that falling for someone in his position would be its own kind of complicated that I do not need right now.

There are also good reasons not to trust my own feelings completely at the moment.  
Grief has a way of making warmth feel like more than it is.  
It makes you want to hold on to anything that makes the weight feel lighter.

So I hold it loosely.

The conversation that felt good.  
The uncertainty about what it meant.  
The not-knowing whether any of this is real or just the particular ache of still recovering from something that mattered.

And underneath all of it, the quieter question I keep circling back to:

What if it is both?

Not a replacement. Not a distraction. Nothing so clean or so simple.

Just someone who makes me feel something I had not felt in a while.  
Not urgency. Not need.  
Just warmth. And the strange, quiet surprise of being genuinely happy to see someone walk into a room.

Even when I was trying to make sure he would not.

---

## What I Am Actually Doing About It

Nothing.

That is the honest answer.

I am doing my work. I am doing it well.  
I am sending Teams messages instead of having conversations.  
I am letting the situation be what it is, without forcing it into a shape it is not ready to take.

Somewhere between December and now, I learned that the in-between is not the enemy.

The not-knowing is uncomfortable, but it is not dangerous.

Some variables take longer to resolve.  
Some feelings do not come with instructions.  
And some people walk into your life at exactly the wrong moment in exactly the right way, and all you can do is notice it and keep showing up.

So that is what I am doing.

Showing up. Handling the queue. Making the coffee.

Sending the Teams message instead of walking over.

And smiling a little, quietly, when he says good morning anyway.

---

*Some weeks give you more than you asked for.*

*More work. More weight. More responsibility.*  
*And occasionally, more feeling than you had space for.*

*The only thing to do is keep going.*
