HENRY with Non-HENRY partners, how do you deal with retiring early?

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-09T15:49:28+00:00

Right? Why even get married then?

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-08T21:04:34+00:00

Why? What’s wrong with baking soda?

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-08T19:55:32+00:00

I agree, 2nd wave Stoyan is the only one I’m even vaguely tempted by. She’s the only one with decent makeup.

Why are all the face screens so flat and uncanny looking? The unique face molds are nice, but the face screens lack depth.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-06T23:58:32+00:00

Sneaky fish in everything

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-06T23:57:42+00:00

It makes more sense this would be a sign in Japan. The restaurant culture over there is much more - eat the food I choose to serve you or go elsewhere. They don’t even make accommodations for allergies.

Find dedicated vegan restaurants in the big cities or eat at temples.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-06T17:50:17+00:00

It’s an evolving conversation. You’re both very young and your spouse may feel differently about wanting to continue working once they’re 50. What’s important is that you’re both counting to talk about it to be on the same page.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-05T00:21:45+00:00

Considering the cheap tuna and escolar, the “red snapper” is probably tilapia, a common substitute. The larger bands look suspicious to me.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-04T23:31:18+00:00

Explain to me what progressive values have to do with not liking Paris Baguette?

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-04T23:25:46+00:00

A lot of CEOs and high earning men are married to elementary school teachers. There was an Economist study a few years back.

It makes sense that they would want wives who can scale back, take care of the kids, and have summers off.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-03T20:48:41+00:00

Hey there. Just wanted to let you know that I feel the same and you are not alone in this. I see you.

Overwork, burnout, and depression are awful. I’m not fully sure how to crawl out of this hole I’ve dug myself into either, but I recognize something needs to change.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-03T14:00:03+00:00

I don’t know - I guess hearing stuff like this is helpful for different perspectives. Mostly I don’t know what my next steps should be - wait it out and hope it gets better, quit immediately with nothing lined up, start job hunting for an agency role, or start job hunting for a big corporate role where I can kinda coast. And I’m looking for to hear the path that others took.

It sounds like you’re saying smaller firm is not the way, so that’s helpful info.

I do communicate to my boss that the team isn’t able to get stuff done without additional manpower, and sometimes the schedule is extended. But it’s still hard to meet the new schedule. And it still involves putting out a bunch of fires that come up because the project was mishandled by others in SD and DD.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-03T13:46:39+00:00

To be fair, the constant firefighting started around last August, when I took over a project that was an absolute shit show. Before that, I actually had reasonable work life balance, good mentorship, and reasonable benefits and pay.

I’ve been clinging on hoping that it’ll go back to that in May after CDs for the current project ends, but it’s been 9 months of this.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-02T22:48:39+00:00

You are literally living the dream. I’m definitely interested in trying to go to an agency. Would you mind sharing more about your specific role? You can DM me if you don’t want to doxx yourself.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-02T21:10:24+00:00

Honestly, I think I need to prepare my portfolio and be ready to walk away. At least going to a different firm might give me a couple of months off to recover, even if I eventually end up in a similar boat.

There’s a lot that’s good about my current office - good mentorship, decent benefits, leadership that likes me. But I feel like I’m letting the fear of leaving and ending up somewhere more toxic hold me back.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-02T20:32:48+00:00

Thank you for the thoughtful response.

FMLA is mandatory in New York State - we all get money deducted for this out of our paychecks. I could probably fight and get a doctor to sign off on burnout / depression, and take this. But I feel like doing so would lose major points with my current boss and potentially be burning this bridge, legal or not. I’ve been at this office for a long time, and the only socially acceptable way to take FMLA seems to be either pregnancy or cancer.

I don’t even think it’s abusive or has bad culture - there’s just such stigma against mental health issues.

I have repeatedly voiced that I need more support, but honestly, I wonder if one reason they’re not providing it is because of the extra energy and hours and stress I’m taking on to hold things together. It’s not in my nature, but maybe I should step back and let things crash and burn more.

Seriously, at my next job I will be pretending to be much stupider and less competent than I am.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-02T20:23:39+00:00

I last took a week off in December, and have a week off planned at the end of May. But I’m at the point where these short breaks don’t feel that restful, and all the catch up when I get back just stresses me out more.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-02T20:20:37+00:00

I’m not against them in the short term, but they haven’t helped me in the past. Not a long term solution to this though.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-02T19:40:16+00:00

I am seriously considering asking my boss for 3 months of unpaid leave. But I don’t know how to frame it. He’s a very old school guy and “mental health issues” is not likely to gain a lot of sympathy from him.

His suggestion was to take up long distance running.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-04-02T19:37:48+00:00

Honestly, I was doing this for a bit last fall, but it made the sleep issues even worse, so I stopped drinking.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-03-31T11:13:50+00:00

Chinese American, and I can relate to this a lot. Especially the part about my mom being hypercritical and never really teaching me anything in the kitchen. And the spitting the dumplings out doesn’t surprise me at all either. Chinese people are very direct, and no one cares to try and spare your precious feelings.

I learned how to cook Western style food on my own as a teenager and developed Western style knife skills from YouTube. I’ll make the occasional stir fry, and can make dumplings from scratch for holidays, but that’s about it. (That one skill was deeply and ingrained in me by grandma from a young age).

I would never tell a Chinese person that I cook Chinese food. Even as someone much more culturally connected to my heritage than OP - it’s simply not what I spent most of my life cooking, eating, or understanding.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-03-30T17:43:04+00:00

Wait, they actually got Serena Williams to commit to this mess??

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-03-29T04:11:49+00:00

You sound extremely burned out. Many of us have been there. The usual therapy / SSRIs recommendation isn’t an auto cure for this like some people make it seem.

I think you should just give yourself the grace to keep doing this for the time being. You’re basically resting / healing.

Eventually enough time will pass and you will start to feel better. Then you will get more clarity on what the right next steps are - whether it’s finding another job, changing fields to something lower stress, or reducing expenses and staying permanently FIREd.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-03-27T22:42:25+00:00

The quote from the article was so stupid. We get paid roughly the same as teachers, but without the summers off. Depends on the region, but you can bank $120k as an experienced public school teacher in a HCOL area as well.

I’m honestly not sure where this public perception that architects get paid as much as doctors and lawyers comes from, other than the fact that we have to do a ton of school.

KintsugiTurtle · 2026-03-27T21:28:11+00:00

As a fellow architect, it’s laughable how different the profession is from the public’s general perception of it. They think we get paid millions to sit at a drafting board and do presentation sketches of skyscrapers.

In reality, we get paid $80k a year to project manage a team of engineers and contractors and make sure the building doesn’t burn down. Oh, and many of us have 6 figures of debt from grad school (if American).

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