We throw around accusations of compartmentalization all the time now, mostly to point out people are likely doing it to:
(a.) survive the remaining seven weeks of winter around these parts (despite various Really Good-Looking Chief Meteorologists claiming it’s spring)
(b.) come to terms with the fact that Russell Wilson is no longer a part of our beloved NFL team
(c.) concede that why holy schools like Gonzaga and St. Peter’s lost during the March Madness hullabaloo, it’s okay that schools of questionable moral turpitude like Duke, North Carolina, and especially Vanderbilt…er…or Villanova or whatever, made it, yet again, to the Final Four
Our accusations work like this: “Hey Nate, you’re compartmentalizing again, knock it off, and please return my all-weather mats. It’s weird you keep taking them.”
Compartmentalization is this thing where people act like ‘50s dads and shove their emotions into the soles of their feet and basically walk around like unempathetic, spiritless, AI-driven virtual assistants/chatbots, which are some of our least favorite things because they just feel so cheap. Show us a chatbot that screams CLASSY and we’ll…send you a magazine subscription or something. Although admittedly…the return on investment on these things is …OUT…OF…SIGHT…my man!
We were able to fire…ah, layoff, 44% of our staff and replace them with ginormous iPhone-like chatbot machines we bought online from someplace in Manchuria. Now our streams of annoying, tackily dressed, mouth-breathing visitors walk into our 52nd-floor penthouse office suite, look confused for a minute, progressively yell, “Hello?” louder and louder to no avail, then realize there’s a giant iPhone propped in our ex-receptionist’s chair staring at them with its creepy, credit card and social security number-stealing dead eyes…and reflexively start swiping and typing on the things to get all of their persistently tiresome questions answered, with nary a precious executive leadership team-breath wasted!
Oh man, we’re excited and (thanks to the cost savings) likely buying a 28-foot 2022 Boston Whaler 280 Outrage from which to fish or otherwise avoid responsibility and reality from. And we’re not even flinching at its starting price of $99,000. Plus, it can handle like an 800-horsepower motor baby! But, ah, we sure do miss Rob, Francesca, Keith, Karen, Paul, Allan, Marci, etc., etc. They will be sorely missed.
Oh yeah. According to our court-mandated psychotherapist, compartmentalization is fine for short periods of time, and a natural way to make it through brief but tough situations like spring in the northwest, what with its 45-degree highs somehow coupled with 33-degree, bone penetrating raindrops that chill us to the bone as we dash from the car in the morning to buy our daily oat milk and kale smoothie from that outrageously priced coffee shop.
This trendily healthy concoction obviously tastes like dirt, but we’re forced to buy the stupid thing because March is now “Health & Fitness Month,” thanks to that consultant lady we hired to figure out why everyone who works here is so miserable. So in we walk, with radiant skin and gleaming smiles, placing the cupped offal conspicuously on our desk as evidence of our active participation in “wellness.” Eventually, we drink about two ounces of the oat/kale nightmare, making a big show of it, walking around smiling and talking to people so they see us “drinking Kool-Aid” as we take the most microscopic sips possible, ultimately to convene in the conference room and surreptitiously dump the green and brown sludge into the touchless pedal trash can thing.
Anyway, our “championing” the health and wellness of our staff are obviously at odds with the gigantic iPhone chatbot machines now occupying the desks of the seven previously mentioned, now suitably replaced, former employees, so let’s move on.
Despite supposedly having an R&D department chock-full of Stanford grads, we can’t do anything about the weather, so keep on compartmentalizing on that bit. But for the Russell Wilson thing, it’s time to let it go and not get bummed out every time there’s another article about how the Broncos have great receivers and a healthy young running back full moxie, and they’re now AFC Super Bowl shoe-ins now that Our Beloved Hero is there. We’ve got some ideas on exactly how to do this.
The best way to deal with the trade of a franchise quarterback is to meditate like a Tibetan monk and forget that Katy Perry, Paul McCartney, and Oprah Winfrey are just a few of the celebrities who also meditate, are definitely not Tibetan monks, and have a combined net-worth that exceeds the past and present combined net-worth of all of the people in our family tree right down the Quaternary Period.
(They probably also do yoga and are, therefore, both quite relaxed and robustly flexible, which means they don’t grunt or make any associated rumbling noises when they bend over to scoop up the diced San Marzano tomatoes that spill on the floor while making a really nice sauce.)
Please note: the Quaternary Period happened, quite spasmodically, 2 million years ago and featured our hairy male, female, and surprisingly gender-neutral ancestors emerging from primordial swamps, pairing off to copulate and promulgate our species, then get married and fight all the time, mostly about “not listening” and spending too much money.
It also happens to be the period within which we all live right now in our luxury condominiums as we watch the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament, which is a great way to decompartmentalize over Our Beloved Hero’s departure because it distracts us from fond memories of his virtually flawless performance against his new team during Super Bowl XLVIII – to the tune of Seahawks, 43, Broncos, 8. Or, for that matter, the Seahawks’ season-long defensive performance that year (acclaimed as the best of the Super Bowl Era.) And remember the following year when Kam Chancellor kept jumping over the Panther’s O-line in attempts to block two field goal attempts as the first half expired in the 2015 NFC divisional round? Ohhhhhh mercy…hahaha, what a sweet, glorious, innocent time.
Indeed, the best way to deal with compartmentalization is to accuse – as wildly as possible – other people of doing it, then watch other sports with them to help them decompartmentalize. Of course, that brings up the Gonzaga/St. Peter’s losing debacle.
Unfortunately, sometimes when we watch other sports to decompartmentalize past sports trauma, it just leads us to new sports trauma we’re forced to compartmentalize. It’s kind of like when a girl dumps her dooshy boyfriend and starts dating Edgar from our Customer Success department only to realize Edgar is an even bigger doosh—and married. I.e., it’s like experiencing the arch of any Mariner’s season – simply tough sledding.
But look at it this way, at least there are sports to watch. Sounders/Timbers, Seattle Storm, Kraken, Silvertips/Winterhawks…ah, Little League, we guess. What else? Pick-up games in the park…
Oh well, the readership here is super smart, so we’re sure they’ll figure it out. Just remember, compartmentalization is only healthy for so long. Maybe taking up the meditation/yoga thing is a better plan. There’s way less heartbreak.
