there’s a song by carrie underwood that goes “sometimes that mountain you’ve been climbing is just a grain of sand,” and the only reason I know that is because I had to listen to it for class in eighth grade. but it’s the weirdest set of words that have just stuck with me all this time. you know, people take their jobs so seriously. like design firms for example. they work with brands to give them an identity, which these days means some sort of clever symbol and color scheme and a million ways to make people notice it. it’s all just so exhausting. putting so much pressure on yourself to make this thing that might impact people’s buying choices, but does it really even matter? people are oversaturated with brands anyway, and we are making it our job to just keep adding to the noise. and we act like it’s the most important thing in the world. I don’t know why I get so anxious about it. why i’m letting this one project get to me so much. it just feels so big and huge and overwhelming. why are my expectations for myself so high? I heard somewhere that anxiety is actually the gap between what you expect to happen and reality. anyway what I mean to say is that people put so much emphasis on these corporate things, and it’s all really quite small in the end. I understand that people want to keep their jobs, but I also think that maybe we would all benefit from just being dentists.