on the topic of trying to not piss everyone off

Wow, so last day at work. Heavens, what an experience. I think I've left all my previous jobs more or less without burning any major bridges, and this job was more or less no exception to that more or less steadfast rule. Actually, I take that back. I feel like I went into this job at a really weird point in my life, and as a result, ended up having a lot of personal growth during the course of the job. I think that this particular job was exceptional in that I managed to figure out my mistakes before they snowballed out of control. There were a number of bumps along the way, to be sure, but nothing that resulted in irreparable damage.

I did prove one of my new hypotheses, as a bonus. This particular one states that there are patterns to life, and figuring out these patterns is necessary to ascertain your future, have a life free of suffering, etc. I guess it could be considered akin to achieving a sort of homeostasis with the universe. For example, take the way we all treat others. The adage "you catch more flies with honey" holds true; almost everyone responds better when you're nice to them than when you're snarky. Therefore, it stands to reason that if you can master the skill of being nice to everyone you come across 100% of the time (thereby recognizing a pattern in your behavior and altering your behavior accordingly), you will generally be at least a little bit more successful in life than someone who is universally snarky.

The hypothesis that I proved (at least to myself) at this job is that if you are universally honest about everything (i.e. following a pattern of 100% honestly across the board), your true path will reveal itself, for better or for worse. This is the first job where I didn't try to be something I'm not, and ultimately found myself being pushed down a particular path that lead me in a direction that was completely different than the one I was on originally. So the "pattern hypothesis" stands (more or less); after a duration where I attempted to be honest 100% of the time, my destiny has been altered and the future is different than I thought it would be even 8 months ago.

Of course, this can come at a price. What might be honesty for one person might alternatively be viewed as intransigence to another. I suppose that whomever chooses to pursue this path (at least, this is the question I've posited to myself) needs to ask themselves if opening up the Pandora's Box of universal honesty and placing faith in the corrective power of the universe and God is really for them. It's a choice, like anything else. I think what led me to the decision that I needed to trust in God 100% was that I am incapable of making the right choice, when left to my own devices. I am a fundamentally flawed human being, and need God and the universe to guide me in the right direction.

My head hurts from all this thinking. I'm going to bed.