The Sanctuary Becomes the Soundstage

My left eyelid is vibrating at a frequency that suggests a structural failure of the soul. It is 4:32 PM on a Friday that has lasted approximately 72 years, and I am currently staring at a grid of 22 faces, each framed in a tiny rectangle of simulated domestic bliss. We are all performing. We are all participating in the Great Digital Recital, a collective hallucination where nodding your head twice every 52 seconds is the only currency that matters. I just sent an email to the regional director-the big one, the one who decides if my department exists in 2022-and I realized, with a cold hollow thud in my chest, that I forgot to attach the actual report. I sent a blank apology for existing. This is what happens when the brain is rewired to prioritize the appearance of attention over the substance of work.

Remote work arrived with a promise of liberation. We were told we would reclaim our lives from the grey cubicle farms, that we would find a new rhythm in the comfort of our own kitchens. Instead, we have turned our sanctuaries into soundstages. The boundary between the private self and the professional avatar has dissolved, leaving behind a residue of constant, low-grade anxiety. You are never not ‘on.’ Even when your microphone is muted, the camera is a relentless witness. It demands a specific kind of facial choreography: the slightly tilted head to indicate empathy, the wide-eyed blink to signal surprise, the persistent, haunting smile that must remain fixed even as your lower back begins to scream from sitting in a chair designed for 12 minutes of use, not 12 hours.

Submarine Invisibility vs. Digital Presenteeism

I think about Alex M. often. He is a submarine cook I met years ago during a research project on confined spaces. Alex M. spent 92 days underwater in a vessel that felt like a pressurized hallway. He told me that in the belly of a submarine, social survival depends on the ability to be invisible. You learn to move through the 12-foot galley without making eye contact, respecting the limited emotional bandwidth of your crewmates. There is an unspoken agreement: we are all here, we are all working, but we do not have to perform for one another. Zoom is the inverse of the submarine. It is a digital claustrophobia where invisibility is seen as a sign of disengagement. If you turn off your camera, you are suspected of sleeping or, worse, being authentic.

We have created a culture of digital presenteeism that is far more taxing than the physical office ever was. In the old world, you could hide in plain sight. You could walk to the breakroom and let your face go slack. You could look out a window for 22 seconds without someone wondering if your Wi-Fi had cut out. Now, the gaze is direct and unyielding. The ‘Self-View’ window is perhaps the most sadistic invention of the modern era. For 52 minutes of every hour, I am forced to watch myself exist. I see the way my mouth sags when I’m tired. I see the 2-centimeter twitch in my eyelid. I am both the performer and the critic, trapped in a feedback loop of vanity and self-loathing. It is impossible to be present for others when you are constantly monitoring your own reflection for signs of fatigue.

The Exhaustion of Vibrancy

This performance of enthusiasm is a form of emotional labor that remains largely unquantified. We are burning through our cognitive reserves just to maintain the illusion of ‘vibrancy.’ I see it in the eyes of my colleagues. We all have that same $82 ring light reflected in our pupils, a tiny white circle that makes us look like we’ve been possessed by the spirit of a mid-tier influencer. We talk about ‘Zoom fatigue’ as if it’s a technical glitch, but it’s actually a systemic failure. It is the exhaustion of a body that is being asked to exist in two places at once: the physical chair in a room that smells like stale coffee and the digital space where you must appear as a high-definition version of your most professional self.

I find myself retreating to the kitchen during the 12-minute gaps between calls. There is a brutal honesty in kitchen appliances that I’ve started to crave. A toaster doesn’t care if you’re smiling. A blender doesn’t require you to nod along to its rotation. There is a grounding reality in the weight of a heavy skillet or the precise click of a well-made coffee machine. When the digital world becomes too thin, too performative, I look for things that have mass and function. This is why people are obsessing over their home setups; we are trying to build a fortress of tactile reality to defend against the encroaching emptiness of the screen. We want tools that solve real problems, like the high-quality gear you find at

Bomba.md, because they offer a reprieve from the performative. A good oven doesn’t ask for your engagement; it just bakes the bread.

The Perpetual Special Dinner

Alex M. once told me that the hardest part of being a submarine cook wasn’t the heat or the 12-hour shifts; it was the ‘forced cheer’ of the holiday meals. When the captain ordered a special dinner to boost morale, the pressure to look happy was more exhausting than the work itself. We are currently living in a perpetual ‘special dinner.’ Every meeting is a mandate for morale. We are expected to bring our ‘full selves’ to work, but only the parts that are polished and bright. No one wants the version of me that just sent an email without the attachment. No one wants the version of me that hasn’t brushed my hair in 2 days.

The irony is that remote work was supposed to be about results, not optics. It was supposed to be the end of ‘butts in seats’ culture. Yet, we have replaced physical presence with a more invasive digital presence. I have 42 tabs open, and 32 of them are probably irrelevant to my actual job, but they feel like armor. If I am doing 22 things at once, surely I am being productive? But the brain doesn’t work that way. It fractures. Each new window is a new stage, a new audience to satisfy. By the time 5:32 PM rolls around, my ability to make a simple decision-like what to eat for dinner-is completely gone. I have spent all my decision-making tokens on choosing which ‘active listening’ facial expression to use during a discussion about Q3 projections.