If you, like myself, work US fed adjacent, and you, like myself, feel like the last few days have been an overwhelming month: reminder that your recently furloughed counterparts are emptying over a month of their inboxes at you all at once and catching up on all the things you managed while they were out and all the things that fell on the floor, trying to make up for lost time, doing their best in a terrible mess even more than 2025 usual. It's not just the holidays or the news.
"Not affected by a shutdown" does not mean not affected by a shutdown. We are all on a struggle bus here together.