To the three people who visit this site, thank you! And sorry for my absence. I’ve been busy killing shit at wok while dealing with some grade-A fuckery. As Bitmoji Me would say,

I came home the other night and started furiously typing away my work drama. Two hours later, I wrote a nine-page manifesto. The plan was to post it to my LinkedIn and get fired in spectacular fashion.

But I didn’t. Maybe I’m too scared to play with real fire.

I shared the draft with my parents, and my dad was sweet. He had read it, called the writing good. “But,” he added, “everyone deals with this kind of bullshit at some point in their career.”

That night I watched the Aziz Ansari “Master of None” episode about Indians on TV. I love the show, and I love seeing fellow Indians represent in Hollywoo (shout out to “Bojack Horseman”). But this episode irritated me. I felt Aziz’s character was being a whiny little bitch. I was also high and talking to Mr. D throughout half the episode, so there’s a chance I missed a lot of pertinent stuff. But, to me, Aziz seemed entitled and overdramatic (with all the legit racism, his so-called “racist” email felt trivial next to all the things that deserve actual outrage). Anyway, there’s a scene where Ansari wants to expose the email, mirroring my blogging strategy. And I couldn’t help but wonder, “Do I sound like a whiny little bitch too?”

I dunno. I shared my story with Ms. Mahogany, my office big sis who knows more about the situation than anyone, including Mr. D. She would be the first person to sit my ass down and tell me to shut the hell up. But she didn’t. She liked the piece (and made my day by calling it a possible sequel to The Devil Wears Prada). Though while we were chatting in the office, I told her I felt weird posting it, and she responded, “I feel you.”

Left unsaid was the issue of integrity. Of rising above the bad and using this blog to promote the things I believe, lessons I have learned. The good stuff.

But it’s easy to wallow in the bad. (And I will say that writing it down was incredibly therapeutic—and writing will continue to be my personal therapy, especially as the shit sandwiches get bigger and tougher to swallow.) But until then, I have an opportunity to turn this entire experience into something good, into lessons worth sharing. So here they are:

Rule #1: Take the hate our of your heart (for the sake of your butthole)

As you know by now, I’ve been pissed at work. Ms. Mahogany called me out on it about a month ago.

I forwarded her an email where my emotions were fueling my pettiness, and she saw right through me.

“Take the hate out your heart for [our boss] and operate with love,” she wrote. “Letting go of all of this is more for your growth and liberation than hers.”

I responded to her email in seconds. “How?” I asked. “Honest question. I need to be like you. That’s exactly what I want to do (let go of the hate), but I’m struggling.”

Here’s what she said:

For the hate thing, that’s more about God—and my spirituality. At the core of it all, God is love, and as His children, we’re to operate at all times with that love.  And it’s HARD to do many times.  But I just know … from experience, with having enemies, or conflict, or harboring deep dislike/hate for someone or a situation—it takes so much of you to be that way. It’s unnatural to your being.

You have so many other things to focus on, to give your time/attention to. To be great at. Stop holding on to the hate for her. For the situation. Leave/give it to God to handle and release. It’s probably weighing on you literally—your mind, your spirit. You’ll feel so much more light, free, if you let go of it.

So I did, Elsa style. I stopped holding onto the anger. It took a few days and bong hits, but I started to think about all the things I like about my boss, the things she’s done that have made me stronger, tougher, better.

Gratitude, I discovered, is a great antidote to hate.

I made slow, incremental progress. A week later, I sent her a message about Lil Wayne being okay after suffering multiple seizures. Later that day, she told me about the new Investigative Discovery show on Adnan Sayed. They were small steps in the right direction.

That night I told Mr. D, “You know, when you’re nice to people, they’re nice to you.”

“Welcome to the human race,” he replied.

And when it was finally time for me to bring up something with her, a conversation I had played out a million times in my head, almost always with underlying anger, frustration, bitterness and entitlement, I instead approached it with love. I went in to the meeting thanking her—and meaning it. (Seeing how the situation ultimately turned out, now, today, almost two months later—she still ended up fucking me).

But I don’t hate her. In fact, here’s an excerpt from my nine-page fuck you:

This is probably where I should admit that I have a complex relationship with Karen #2. On the one hand, I really like her. Part of why I wanted my job was because of the opportunity to work with her. In addition to being smart, she’s cool. She’s friendly. She fashions herself a Rose but dresses like Sue Ellen. She’s funny and loves Lil Wayne almost as much as I do. She has informed opinions on celebrity gossip and office politics. She supports my blog and stoner lifestyle and has a pothead husband I’ve never met. She is easy to talk to, has a deft understanding of communications, and serves as a great bouncing board for ideas.

The best thing to emerge from this professional bullshit has been “learning to operate with love.” Loving my enemy. I can see how approaching difficult situations with love in your heart is what it means to have God on your side. Perhaps it’s even what we Hindus call karma. At my best, when I truly feel myself leading with integrity and grace, I do so because of this lesson.

At this point, some of you might be thinking, “That’s lovely, but what does it have to do with buttholes?”

Well… glad you asked! I suffer from the excruciatingly painful condition of anal fissures, where my poops rip apart my asshole and feel like glass shards leaving my anus. I bleed worse than the second day of my period, and sometimes this shit (pun intended) lasts weeks. At its worse, it hurts just to walk, sit, and fart.

Anyway, the last time the fissures came back, they lasted a month, and I literally could not even. So I decided to get surgery, which was scheduled on the Duck’s forthcoming birthday.

I was terrified. I told Mr. D. “She is going to use her birthday powers to curse my butthole!” He told me I was insane.

He’s probably right, although Indians are very big on astrology and scheduling things on auspicious dates. But anyway, I eventually realized Karen 2 doesn’t have power over my butthole; I do. Kind of like in The Ten Commandments when Rameses ordered all of the first-born Hebrews to die, but it was actually the Egyptian sons who did. I mean, on a lesser scale, of course, but the idea that hate boomerangs back in awful, karmic ways may have helped expedite the hate from my heart!

Rule #2: RYOC!

Okay, advance warning that this rule is a bit crass. But… it’s a good one, so here goes:

Ms. Mahogany and I were venting at happy hour a few months back, when, three Malbecs and martinis later, we started talking about the need to do more writing outside of work.

“If you were getting published in the New York Times, this shit wouldn’t bother you so much,” she told me. “Keep blogging. Pitch your work out.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s like I’m waiting for them to get me off.”

“Yes, bitch,” she answered, a bit too loud for what came next: “You gotta rub yo’ own clit!”

My jaw dropped, and I said the only thing I possibly could: “You’re brilliant.”

It’s a genius line. And here’s where I take a detour from my work lessons to just appreciate it literally, especially as a mother of girls. I know it’s too young to talk to them this explicitly about sex, but when we do, I want them to know this is my sexual feminist theory: Every girl should lose her virginity to herself.

No guy is having his first orgasm with you for the first time. He’s boned his hand a billion times already. But women often don’t have our first orgasm until well after our first sexual experience. Crazy!

So this is my message for girls everywhere: Get to know and love your body. It’s beautiful and incredible and capable of the most remarkable things. Enjoy it. Own it. Embrace it. And when you do finally have the urge to have sex, start with yourself. You won’t regret it.

Rub your own clit. As a metaphor for work, life, marriage, whatever, the metaphor still stands: Don’t expect someone else to make you happy in a way you can’t make yourself. It’s unreasonable, and it will always, inevitably, lead to disappointment.

In fact, I reached out to one of my smartest, most successful mentors last week, shortly after things at work came to a final, ugly head. His advice was practically the same. “Don’t look to your employers to validate your self-assessment,” he wrote. “Look beyond them.”

I am channeling that wisdom now, as I type this, feeling like a sleep-deprived, married-with-children Carrie Bradshaw. But instead of having sex and the city, I’m getting stoned in the suburbs.

Writing is my passion, and nobody can take that from me. It’s the one professional thing that gets me off without fail. So I just need to keep doing it. For me.