literature
Best corporate culture and workplace literature to better your workplace experience. Journal's favorite stories.
What the Water Asks of You
There is a particular quality to a lake at night that's difficult to describe to someone who hasn't experienced it. The cold hits you in a specific sequence — ankles first, then thighs, then the sharp intake of breath when it reaches your torso — and then something shifts, and the cold becomes simply the temperature of the world, and you stop registering it as something to endure. The stars overhead are different out here than they are anywhere with streetlights. The water is dark and very still at that hour, and when you lie on your back and let it hold you, the sound changes too: muffled, interior, the particular silence of being almost completely submerged.
By Bertyl Kently4 months ago in Journal
Moonshadow
My mother loved a Cat Stevens song. That's where it starts — not with astronomy, not with mythology, though both play into it. She heard the song young and carried it for years, and when I was born she gave it to me. Moonshadow. It's on my birth certificate, same as anyone's name is on theirs, the first thing officially recorded about a person before they've had any say in who they'll become.
By Bertyl Kently4 months ago in Journal
Fifteen Minutes Away
The apartment is a fifteen-minute walk from mine. I know this because I've timed it, more than once, on evenings when I'm walking to meet him somewhere that isn't his home. Fifteen minutes. In three months of dating, I have never once been inside it.
By Bertyl Kently4 months ago in Journal
The Math Nobody Wants to Do. AI-Generated.
There's a particular humiliation in selling your plasma to pay rent for people who are employed. I'm fifty-three. I work full time. I run a small side operation that brings in a few hundred dollars a month. On one of my days off I drive for a grocery delivery app, and last week I used two vacation days to do it instead of resting, because I needed the money. I borrowed from my parents — who are in their seventies. I sold plasma. I tell you this not for sympathy but because I want the full picture on the table before I explain how we got here.
By Bertyl Kently4 months ago in Journal
When Bad Conduct Hides Behind Identity (Part 1). AI-Generated.
(Time-Stamped Video Clip Summary: From 18:34-22:39, the call shifts from a normal pricing question into the real issue. Tomi is asking basic questions about a $40,000 vehicle: the rebate, the in-person discount, the actual out-the-door number, and whether the dealership will confirm the deal over the phone. Instead of simply clarifying the pricing, the manager personalizes the resistance, later calling him “difficult” and “combative” before introducing the “male manager” implication herself. This is the moment the dealership’s pricing game turns into something bigger: a lesson in passive aggression, motive-reading, and using identity as a shield for bad conduct.)
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast4 months ago in Journal
The Ticket I Didn’t Take. AI-Generated.
The camera caught his plate, not his face. That detail matters more than it should. We live in a country where speed cameras photograph license plates rather than drivers, which means the system runs on an honor mechanism that isn't really an honor mechanism at all — it's an opportunity. When the ticket arrives, the registered owner can either accept it or name someone else as the actual driver. That person gets a notification, and if they accept responsibility, the fine transfers to them. It's a small administrative shuffle, the kind of bureaucratic gap that exists in every system if you look closely enough.
By Bertyl Kently5 months ago in Journal
What Gets Thrown Away. AI-Generated.
Growing up, you didn't waste food in our house. That wasn't a philosophy anyone articulated — it was just the atmosphere, the same way certain things become true in families without ever being said aloud. You took what you could finish. If your eyes were bigger than your stomach, you heard about it. By the time I was old enough to host dinners of my own, the instinct was so deep it had stopped feeling like a rule and started feeling like who I am.
By Bertyl Kently5 months ago in Journal
The Pen Refused to Give Up
People often ask why I write. They assume it is for readers, recognition, or the hope of becoming successful one day. The truth is much simpler. I write because I need to. There are thoughts that never make it into conversations, feelings that sit quietly in the heart until they become too heavy to carry. Writing is the only place where they can breathe. Every blank page becomes a silent listener that never interrupts, judges, or walks away. If someone reads my words and finds comfort in them, that is a beautiful gift. If a stranger realizes they are not alone because of something I wrote, then every late night and every deleted paragraph was worth it. But that has never been the main reason I keep picking up the pen. I write for myself. For the future version of me who will someday forget how far I have come. For the person who will face doubt and wonder if any of this matters. I leave these pages behind as proof that I kept going even when my confidence disappeared. This week I received my first rejection from a publication. For a moment, it felt like someone had stamped the word "Not Good Enough" across my dreams. The voice of self-doubt immediately began whispering that maybe I should stop trying. Instead, I opened my notebook and started writing. My journal is far from perfect. Some pages are neat, others are filled with crossed-out sentences, random thoughts, coffee stains, and spelling mistakes that would make any teacher sigh.
By Muhammad Abbas5 months ago in Journal
What I Said Because I Loved Him. AI-Generated.
My brother Owen has always known what he wants. That's the thing about him — the quality I admired growing up and occasionally envied in my twenties, when I was still revising my own life in rough draft. He bought a house at twenty-eight and painted every room before he moved in. He's been with his company long enough that his name means something there. At thirty-two he talks about marriage and children the way other people talk about things they've already half-decided — not dreams, exactly, just the next items on a list.
By Bertyl Kently5 months ago in Journal
The Word I Chose. AI-Generated.
The morning started without incident, which is how mornings start before something small goes sideways. I had a pediatric dermatology appointment for my daughter at midday — a routine thing, a minor skin condition, the kind of concern that feels larger to a preteen than it will in five years. We arrived early, which I always do, because being early is one of the small ways I try to keep the day from slipping. We were called back right around the scheduled time. The nurse was efficient and pleasant. A resident came in within ten minutes, looked at my daughter's skin, made some preliminary notes. She told us the attending physician would be right in to finalize everything.
By Bertyl Kently5 months ago in Journal
The Last Breakfast. AI-Generated.
The Last Breakfast I made the buttermilk from scratch. That's where this story starts — not with the argument, not with the eggs, but with me the morning before, warming whole milk on the stove and adding lemon juice and waiting for it to curdle into something useful. I made the butter too, in the stand mixer, because I'd seen a technique that intrigued me and because that's the kind of cook I am: the kind who treats a Tuesday breakfast like it deserves the same attention as anything else.
By Bertyl Kently5 months ago in Journal
