🏢 The Potemkin Department of Wellness
Internal Memo — eyes only
BestGuessistan Bureau of Appearances and Performance
We regret to inform you that the Department of Wellness remains a Potemkin village.
The facades are gleaming.
Step counts logged.
Supplements sorted.
Affirmations whispered like bribes to a system we no longer trust.
All appearances suggest functionality.
But behind the surface: cardboard and collapse.
We are not well.
We are performing wellness.
We are tired.
Not sleepy-tired.
Soul-tired.
Structurally, existentially, capital-T Tired.
And yes:
When asked how we are, we say great.
When asked how we’re feeling, we say grateful.
When offered help, we say no thanks — I’ve got it.
Because here in BestGuessistan, performance reviews never end.
And we know the drill.
We optimize.
We over-function.
We disappear into deliverables and keep the dashboard green.
We are dangerously good at appearing fine.
As Barbara Ehrenreich warned: we are expected to be relentlessly upbeat — even in pain, even in crisis.
Wellness has become performance art.
And we? We’re headliners.
But by night, the beams sag.
The body mutinies in a dialect we never learned.
Flickering pain.
Fractured vision.
Static that drowns thought.
The CSATs have tanked.
The Brainjuice Bar is shuttered (out of juice) and the smoothie machine is weeping, both from condensation and exhaustion.
Every metric’s redlined.
Still, we show up.
Still, we smile.
Still, we perform.
Because in BestGuessistan, performance buys time.
And maybe — just maybe — belief.
This isn’t healing.
It’s high-functioning denial, dressed for work.
Until then, the Department of Wellness remains structurally unsound.
Visually compliant.
Spiritually on PTO.
The walls may be hollow.
But the banners are still flying.
Just don’t lean too hard.
It’s all held up by hope, habit, and whatever we had left in the tank.
Appearances@BG.gov is currently accepting inquiries, compliments, and denial.
Actual help, however, must be routed elsewhere.
#BestGuessistan #Burnout #resilience #WellnessPerformance #Satire #InvisibleIllness