What happens when work isn’t bad, but it’s not good either? When the best word to describe it is simply “fine”?
In this episode of Outlaws, Kate and Shayla start with a book review of Mattering by Jennifer Breheny Wallace, but the conversation quickly shifts into something more familiar. A discussion about workplaces, both good and bad, and that oddly flat feeling when work is neither terrible nor fulfilling.
The idea of “mattering” gives language to something many people experience but rarely name. The small, everyday moments where that feeling either shows up or doesn’t. When someone notices what you’ve done, and when they don’t. Over time, those moments shape how work feels far more than big, obvious factors.
This conversation explores where that feeling comes from, how it gets lost, the kinds of workplaces that support it or erode it, and what individuals can do within their own lives.
It also reflects on a simple but uncomfortable possibility, that when work feels off, it may not just be about the role, the hours or the pressure, but the sense that you don’t feel like you matter.
