From b0d783267e2f75ac08dda68d9560219298809431 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: latte Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:38:04 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] create one pair of hands, my true thinking of the current situations --- src/content/blog/one-pair-hands.md | 321 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 321 insertions(+) create mode 100644 src/content/blog/one-pair-hands.md diff --git a/src/content/blog/one-pair-hands.md b/src/content/blog/one-pair-hands.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4ffd678 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/content/blog/one-pair-hands.md @@ -0,0 +1,321 @@ +--- +title: "One pair of hands" +description: "On carrying everything alone: the tickets, the silence, the grief, and the people I can't quite reach." +pubDate: 2026-04-14 +tags: ["burnout", "work", "personal", "reflection", "grief"] +category: "reflection" +--- + +*by LATTE* + +There is a version of being needed that feels good. + +Trusted. Relied upon. The person who knows how things work. + +And then there is this version. + +The version where you are needed because there is simply no one else. + +--- + +## When the team became one + +A few weeks ago, I became the only helpdesk. + +Not because I asked for it. +Not as a temporary arrangement with a clear end date. + +Just. One by one, the others were gone. + +And the tickets kept coming. + +I am now the SPOC. Literally. +Single point of contact. +Single point of failure. + +The irony is not lost on me. +In IT, we warn against single points of failure all the time. +We build redundancy. We document. We plan for outages. + +Nobody planned for this one. + +And nobody asked if I was okay with being it. + +--- + +## Everything is urgent + +The thing about being the only one is that the word *urgent* starts to lose its weight. + +When everything is code red, nothing is. + +But the pressure behind each ticket is still real. +The frustration on the other end of the phone is still real. +And I am still one person with one pair of hands. + +People do not see the twelve other fires when they send me the thirteenth. + +They just see their fire. + +I understand that. + +It does not make it easier. + +I come home tired. +I wake up tired. +And somewhere in between I go back and do it again. + +Sometimes I think my brain is running like a server with no load balancer. +Every request hits the same node. +Eventually something times out. + +I am getting close to that point. + +--- + +## The invisible work + +Let me just say it plainly, because I never do. + +**People** +Onboarding and offboarding. Login issues. The full user lifecycle from day one to last day. + +**Microsoft 365** +User management, groups, roles, permissions, conditional access, MFA. +Mailboxes, shared inboxes, distribution lists. +SharePoint sites and permissions. +Intune: enrollment, monitoring, compliance, remote wipes. + +**Devices & assets** +Maintaining the asset register. Replacing and swapping devices. +Building the full kit for every new colleague: laptop, phone, SIM card, bag, accessories, fully set up and ready for day one. + +**Logistics** +Ordering hardware through our supplier. Shipping packages when needed. +Managing SIM cards for secondment staff. + +**Tickets** +Triage. Creating, updating, routing. Keeping everything current. +Being the bridge between the helpdesk and every external party. + +**Everything else** +Network advice. First-line security checks. Answering the phone. +Escalating the things I cannot fix. Not showing that it costs me anything. + +None of this is one job. + +This is what four people were doing before. + +And now it is what I do. +Alone. +Every day. + +The machine keeps running, so people assume the machine is fine. + +The machine is not fine. + +The machine is one bad morning away from an unhandled exception. + +--- + +## The people around me + +Here is the part that makes it harder. + +I cannot even put my weight down somewhere. + +My team lead knows. He sees it. +But he is fighting his own battles right now, getting close to his own edge. +I care about him. I do not want to push more onto someone who is already bending. + +His boss knows too. +He is going on vacation tomorrow. + +And then there is the functional management team, the people I genuinely click with, who actually check in on me. +They are buried too. + +The BI team lead sometimes stops by. +Asks how I am doing. +And I freeze a little. +Because I do not know what to do with someone who asks. +So I smile and say it is fine. + +It is not fine. + +But I do not know what he can offer, and I do not know how to ask. +So I stay quiet. + +I look around and everyone is already carrying too much. +And somehow that makes me feel like I am not allowed to put mine down. + +Like my weight would just crush someone who is already on their knees. + +So I hold it. + +--- + +## Him + +And then there is him. + +Someone at work I keep thinking about in a way I cannot fully explain. + +I do not know if what I feel is real. +I genuinely do not know. + +My honest thought is that maybe my system is just running a process it does not have the right dependencies for. +That after months of carrying everything alone, something in me is just reaching for whoever feels steady. +Whoever has capacity. +Whoever seems like they could hold something without breaking. + +And he feels like that. + +But I do not know if that is a feeling or just a symptom. + +And I cannot ask anyone. +So it just sits there, unresolved, taking up memory I do not have to spare. + +--- + +## The people I miss + +I have friends. + +Good ones, I think. +The kind worth having. + +But after a day like this, I come home with nothing left. +No energy to reach out. +No words that are not already spent. + +By the time I could call someone, I am already too tired to explain why I needed to. + +So I do not. + +And the distance grows quietly, the way memory leaks do. +Not all at once, just a little at a time, until suddenly the heap is full. + +I miss them. +And I feel guilty for not showing up. +And I am too tired to fix it. + +All three things at once. + +--- + +## Him, still + +There is someone I lost in December. + +He was my everything, and I mean that in the way that actually has weight rather than just sounds like something you say. + +He was my world. + +And since then I have just kept going. +Work. Tickets. Systems. Problems. More tickets. +Never a moment to actually sit with what it meant to lose him. + +There was no room to grieve. +There still is not. + +So the grief just travels with me. +Into the office. Into the evening. Into the backyard at night when the music is on and I am finally alone enough to feel it for a second before exhaustion takes over. + +Some days it feels further away. +Some days it is right there, sudden and specific, like a process that never actually closed. + +I miss him. +Still. +And I think that is allowed. + +Even when there is no space for it. + +--- + +## What I do instead of falling apart + +I let it pass over me. + +That is the only way I know how to describe it. + +I do not run. I do not panic. +I just let the wave come and try not to drown. + +It works, mostly. + +But it costs something every time. + +And I am not sure how much is left in the tank. + +By the time I get home, the version of me that walks through the door is not the full version. +It is whatever survived the day. + +--- + +## Evening + +Tonight I sat in the backyard with music on. + +A playlist called koffie huis. + +Nothing urgent. Nothing that needed me. + +Just the air, and the sound, and a few minutes where I was not a critical dependency in someone else's infrastructure. + +Just a person sitting outside. + +Tired. +Carrying things. +But sitting outside. + +It was enough. + +For now, it was enough. + +--- + +## Why I write this + +I do not write this for sympathy. + +I write this because I could not say it out loud today. +Or yesterday. +Or the day before. + +At work I smile. I say the queue is manageable. +I do not tell anyone that I come home exhausted and wake up the same way. +I do not tell anyone about the grief I am still carrying. +I do not tell anyone about the confusion I cannot place. +I do not tell anyone how much I miss my friends, how I just cannot reach them. + +I do not say any of it. + +Because I do not want to add my weight to people who are already carrying too much. +Because I do not have the courage to be this honest in the room. +Because I was raised, in some quiet way, to just keep going. + +And so I do. + +But not here. + +This blog, this site, these words. +This is the only place I allow myself to be loud. + +No one here needs me to be okay. +No one here is waiting for me to fix something. + +So here it is. +Unformatted. Unresolved. Still compiling. + +I am tired. +I am grieving something I never had time to grieve. +I am confused about feelings I cannot verify. +I am missing people I love but cannot reach. +I am showing up anyway. + +And I hope, I really hope, that is enough. + +--- + +*some things do not have a clean exit code.* +*sometimes you just let the process run.* \ No newline at end of file