you ever just hit all your marks all your goals every single one and still feel like an absolute loser like the biggest fraud i mean you’re crushing it right your numbers are good your store is performing better than expected you even pulled off that last-minute holiday promo that was a total nightmare but hey it WORKED your bosses are happy they email you the little emoji thumbs up sometimes even a fire emoji if they're feeling spicy but then you look at the other store the sister branch you know the one run by that lady who's always so chipper always 'living her best life' on instagram or whatever you see their numbers you see how they're just... not making it i mean they’re DROWNING in red ink and it’s not even their fault really it’s a shittier location for sure smaller foot traffic different demographics harder to push the premium stuff and you’re just there watching it happen every damn week the report lands in your inbox and it’s the same story you see the projections you see the actuals and the gap just gets WIDER and you know someone’s head is gonna roll i mean i don't even — whatever and you’re sitting there in your tiny home office which is really just a corner of the kitchen table you set up after the landlord hiked the rent on the ‘proper’ office space you were using and you're just staring at your own spreadsheet the green numbers blindingly bright and all you can think is not 'i did good' or 'i won' it's just 'why not them' why are they failing why can’t *they* get it together i mean you’re not competing right you're on the same team technically same company same brand but it feels like you're personally responsible for their lack of success like their failure is a reflection of something you did wrong you’re tired you know the kind of tired where your eyes just ache and your brain feels like static you've been hustling for months putting in eighty-hour weeks sometimes more just to keep this thing afloat so you can pay your own bills keep the lights on maybe buy groceries that aren’t ramen for once and you look at their numbers and you just feel this hollow ache in your chest like a punch you didn’t see coming and you think maybe it would be better if your numbers were bad too just so you wouldn't have to carry this weird guilt this strange burden of being the one who "made it" while someone else didn't it's like you're winning but you're losing everything else i dunno what everything else is really but it feels like it sometimes just feels like a big empty victory and you're just there with your achievement feeling... nothing really just cold and alone and watching the red numbers get redder and wondering if you're the bad guy for doing what you're supposed to do.