Spent the whole holiday party smiling while my cousin bragged about her promotion

I was at my aunt's house for Thanksgiving and my cousin spent like 20 minutes talking about her new director title at some tech firm. Everyone was clapping and I'm just standing there nodding with this frozen grin, thinking about how I just redid someone's ductwork for $200 in the freezing cold. I mean, I'm happy for her, really, but it stung because she got lucky with connections and I've been working 60 hour weeks for years. Has anyone else had that moment where you're cheering for someone but it just makes you feel small inside?

4 comments

4 Comments

karen_sanchez491mo ago

Has anyone ever tried to explain what they do at a family dinner only to have someone ask if you can "fix their printer" real quick? That's basically my life as a freelancer. Last Christmas my uncle cornered me about his wifi router for 45 minutes while my cousin's finance boyfriend talked about his stock portfolio. By the end I was just nodding along like you said. But I started doing what @michaeltorres mentioned - I told them about the time a client's website crashed mid-presentation and I had to rebuild it from a coffee shop bathroom. Suddenly everyone was laughing and asking questions. Turns out people get bored of the same old success stories anyway.

spencer7821mo ago

Used to roll my eyes at the disaster stories but honestly they're way more fun to tell.

michaeltorres1mo ago

My 2018 thanksgiving was almost identical, I just started bringing work stories about fixing a flooded basement and people actually found it funny. After that I stopped comparing and just owned what I do.

paul_taylor211mo ago

Knew a guy who worked on the assembly line at a car plant and he told me about the time a robot malfunctioned and started painting EVERYTHING in sight. His family was dead silent at first, then his uncle laughed so hard he spit out his drink. After that, my friend became the star of every dinner. He said he learned to just embrace the weird stuff and stop trying to dress it up. That's exactly what @michaeltorres is talking about - when you own what you do, people respect the honesty way more than any fancy job title.