2026-03-13

Share the Cortisol, Jan

Mom said we have to share the rest of the cortisol, Jan. You can’t keep hogging it like this is a private equity allocation. We all had meetings today. We all opened inboxes that began with “quick question” and ended in existential debt.

By 10:14 a.m., the office turned into a hormonal commodities exchange. Design was bidding futures on panic. Finance was quietly stockpiling dread in a spreadsheet called "final_final_USE_THIS". Engineering announced a temporary freeze on calm until after deployment. Jan stood at the center of it all like a warlord of stress chemistry, saying things like, “I need it for focus,” while shaking hard enough to vibrate a standing desk into another tax bracket.

This is what happens when modern work culture turns basic nervous system function into a team resource. We don’t need another optimization framework. We need a treaty, a ration card, and maybe one afternoon where nobody says “circle back.” Until then, pass the cortisol to the left and keep your head down.