Corporatology 009: Death by a Label Maker

“I’m not who I think I am. I’m not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am.” — Charles Cooley

I scrapped the original version of this. So here I am, late on delivery.

I hate being late. I hate it to a fault, so much that I probably judge those who are chronically late - don't worry, I'm married to one - so there's still love amid the judginess.

I was halfway through building out some polished, clever taxonomy—
a whole Dewey Decimal System of corporate characters.
The labels. The boxes. The categories Corporate America quietly sorts us into.

It sounded smart.

It wasn’t.

Plainly, it was ambiguous trash.
Okay—maybe not trash.
But not worth your time.
Rubbish.

Because the real question wouldn’t leave me alone:

Who was I in Corporate America?

Daggum.

And here’s the answer that I would’ve edited a year ago:

I was the High Capacity Operator.
The Reliable One.
The one you could trust to get it done.

And underneath that?

I was also the Performer.
The one who believed my value lived in output.
The one who didn’t know how to stop without feeling like I was slipping.
If I don't do it, it won't get done.

I walked a strange line—
confident in execution,
uncertain in identity.
The classic imposter syndrome modus operandi.

Bold in rooms.
But carrying a quiet, persistent doubt that followed me home.
The chasm just on the edge of my path.

I wasn’t chasing the summit.
I was stabilizing the climb.

(And let’s be honest—you've seen those Everest documentaries.
Bleak.)

I told myself I was just being realistic.
It's just Corporate America, love.
Responsible. An A+ Manager. Lord above.

But who was I in that System?

I was the one who made it work.

And the one it quietly cost.

So let me show you how it plays out.

Not in theory.
In practice. In experience.

The High Capacity Operator

It starts off clean.

You do good work.
You do it fast.
You do it consistently.

People notice.

You become the one they trust.
The one they call.
The one they loop in when something matters.
You're part of the in crowd.

And at first—it feels good.

You’re valuable.
Reliable.
Seen.
Promoted.
Popular, even.

Until the work stops being a reflection of your capability—
and starts becoming an expectation of your capacity.

More gets added.

Quietly at first.
Then all at once.

You don’t question it.
You handle it.
Handle that business.

Because that’s who you are. Right?
It's who I am.

But here’s the part no one sees.

The late nights that don’t get mentioned.
The mental tabs that neverever close.
The constant low-grade pressure humming in the background.
Dreaming of synergy, circling back, and collaboration.

The moments where you sit in your car for a minute longer than necessary—
just to [deep]breathe[in, out, 1, 2, 3] before walking inside.
Being flat brain-drained even after waking up.

The tears that show up out of nowhere.
Not dramatic. Not loud.

Just… there.

Because something in you is overextended,
and you don’t even know exactly when it tipped.

And still—you keep going.
Keep on swimming.

Because the label doesn’t just describe you anymore.

It owns you.

You’re not deciding what you take on.
The expectation is.

And the worst part?

It doesn’t break all at once.

It wears you down slowly—
until one day, something small feels impossibly heavy.

An email.
A request.
One more “can you just…”

And your system—mentally, emotionally—just… doesn’t respond the same way.

That’s when you realize:

The machine didn’t break overnight.

It broke quietly.
Over time.
While everyone—including you—was calling it “strength.”

The label didn’t recognize your capacity.
It consumed it.

And here’s the part that took me longer to realize than I’d like to admit:

This wasn’t just me.

I thought maybe I just needed better boundaries.
Better time management.
More discipline.
More resilience.

Which is silly, right? Do you know me?

That if I could just “handle it better,”
it wouldn’t feel like this.

I can handle anything, right? Darn right.

But the more I paid attention—
the more I started to see it everywhere.

Different people.
Different roles.
Same pattern.

My coworkers and friends - maxed to the max.

I could tell you stories of my lovely team, each of them weaving in and out of the various, lethal labels.

The High Capacity Operator carrying too much.
The “Difficult” one getting sidelined.
The Quiet One getting overlooked.
The “Almost There” stuck in place.

Different labels.
Same outcome.

People being reduced to a version of themselves—
and then managed accordingly.

That’s when it clicked.

This isn’t random.

It’s a System.

Not a formal one.
Not written down anywhere.

But it’s there.
And today, it’s loud in my head—louder than I can ignore.

A quiet, consistent way Corporate America makes sense of people:

Label them.
Simplify them.
Operate based on that version.

Death by a Label Maker. Click click click.

And to be clear—
labels aren’t the problem by themselves.

They’re useful. Efficient. Necessary, even.

But somewhere along the way,
we stopped treating them like shorthand—

Forget the CV.
We’ll watch you—and label you ourselves.

and started treating them like truth.

There is only one truth—and it isn’t found in labels.

“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
— John 8:32

But once we feign freedom in a label,

the label doesn’t just describe you.

It decides:

• what you’re trusted with
• what you’re passed over for
• how much you’re given
• how far you go

I wasn’t just High Capacity.

I was a High Performer in a System
that rewards that label
right up until it costs you something.

And I wasn’t the only one.

The Performer

The High Capacity Operator is what people saw.

The Performer is what I became.

Because somewhere along the way,
the work stopped being something I did—
and started being something that defined me.

If I was producing, I was good.
If I was delivering, I was valuable.
If I was needed, I was secure.

And if I wasn’t?

That’s where things got… unclear.

Brene Brown says, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

Rest didn’t feel like rest.

It felt like risk.

Slowing down didn’t feel like balance.

It felt like slipping.

So I stayed in motion.

Not always because I had to—
but because I didn’t know who I was without it.

And no one questions this version of you.

They reward it.

They trust it.
They depend on it.
They build around it.

Which only reinforces it.

So you keep going.

You say yes when you shouldn’t.
You carry things that aren’t yours.
You push past signals your body is clearly sending.

Because stopping doesn’t feel neutral.

It feels like losing something.

And here’s the part I didn’t see at the time:

I wasn’t just performing at work.

I was performing worth.

So when the pressure built—
when the stress showed up—
when the cracks started forming—

I didn’t step back.

I pushed harder.
Because I'm resilient, and there's no way they'll see me crack.

Because I thought the solution
was more of the thing that was breaking me.

That’s the trap.

The label doesn’t just describe what you do.

It starts to define what you believe you’re worth.

And once that happens—

You don’t need the System to maintain the label.

You’ll do it yourself.

The truth is, I feel a quiet sadness when I look back at how I operated.
It’s hard to reconcile how long I stayed in motion—

The Responsible One

This is the one that doesn’t get called out.

Because it looks like strength.

I didn’t just do my job.
I held things together.

When something slipped—I stepped in.
When something broke—I absorbed it.
When something needed to be done—I didn’t wait to be asked.

Not because it was always mine.

But because I knew I could.

And over time, that became the expectation.

Not formally.
Not explicitly.

But consistently.

I was the one who would catch it.
The one who would carry it.
The one who would make sure it didn’t fall apart.

And here’s the part I didn’t question:

Just because I could carry it—
didn’t mean I was supposed to.

But I didn’t pause there.

I took it on.

Again.
And again.
And again.

Because responsibility, for me, wasn’t just action.

It was identity.

If something failed, I felt it.

Even when it wasn’t mine.
Even when no one asked me to own it.

So I overreached.

I filled gaps that weren’t assigned to me.
I protected outcomes that weren’t mine to protect.
I carried pressure that didn’t belong to me.

And from the outside?

It looked like leadership.

Dependable.
Committed.
All-in.

But internally?

It was heavy.

A constant awareness that something, somewhere, could slip—
and I would be the one to catch it.
That all failures, shortcomings, delays, imperfections would reflect on me - and it was personal.

And eventually, it caught up to me.

The mental load.
The emotional weight.
The quiet exhaustion of always being “on.”

And the hardest part to admit?

No one made me do it at that level.

They benefited from it.
They relied on it.

But I sustained it.
And I did it without anyone asking me to...
I did it to myself.

To my own hurt.

Truth

At some point, I had to confront something deeper than burnout.
Deeper than stress.
Deeper than workload.

I had to confront what I believed was true about me.

Because the labels weren’t just around me anymore.

They were in me.

High Capacity. Reliable. Responsible.

They weren’t just descriptions.

They became my only identity.

And the dangerous thing about labels is this:

If you hear them long enough,
you stop questioning them.

You start building your life around them.
Protecting them.
Performing for them.

But labels aren’t truth.

They’re observations—
filtered through bias, timing, context, and perception.

Sometimes accurate.
Always incomplete.

And at some point, I had to ask:

If all of that can shift—
if all of that can change depending on who’s watching—

Then what doesn’t?

There’s only one place I’ve found that answer.

Not in performance.
Not in feedback.
Not in perception.

In God.

“Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
— 1 Samuel 16:7

When you unplug, it looks like separation.

Separation between:

• what I do and who I am
• what I’m called and what is true
• what’s been said and what actually stands

Because the truth doesn’t shift with performance.

It doesn’t increase when you deliver.
It doesn’t decrease when you rest.

It just… is.

The Release

I’m still a high performer.
And, honestly, I value that part of myself.

But it’s no longer where I find my worth.

My heart burst open writing this and pulling this beautiful verse into it:

“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.” — Luke 12:6–7

I still do good work.
I still show up.
I still carry things when it makes sense.

But I’m fighting the good fight to not be owned by it.

I am anchored to the One who keeps me.

I say the thing a little sooner.
I step forward before I feel fully ready.
I allow myself to be seen outside the version of me that’s already been approved.

The Final Truth

Corporate will always label.

It has to.
It’s how systems move fast.

But you don’t have to live inside the smallest version of what’s been said about you.

Because every label you’ve been given—

even the good ones—

could contain a piece of truth.

But none of them contain the whole of it.

And the moment you stop treating them like identity—

you create space.

To breathe.
To create.
To strength, arms wide open.
To be seen differently.
To see yourself differently.

And maybe that’s the real work.

Not becoming someone new.

But letting go of everything that was never fully true to begin with. 🤍