During my first week at Cockroach Labs, our company held its annual Roacherness Awards, a ceremony to recognize and celebrate Roachers who embody our values. I was pleasantly surprised when my colleague Chelsea received an award for our value ‘Establishing Balance,’ celebrating the boundaries she sets between her work and home life through using benefits like our flexible Paid Time off policy to explore the world. This being my second job out of college, I was shocked. My experience post-college was one in which companies asked me to dive into my work with cult-like abandon, to define myself by the goals of the company first, and to let who I am come second.

My guiltiest pleasure right now is watching apocalypse films. It’s less escapism than it is catharsis, and there’s usually a happy ending (or at the very least---they have an ending). When you watch these apocalyptic movies, the audience is always focused on the hero, holding the door closed against some encroaching danger. Few people are paying attention to the guy in the corner of the room sitting with others, telling some wild story or caught in the middle of some elaborate joke, trying to get a smile out of people in crisis.