The Phoenix Diaries: The Chapter Where I Was Too Positive

Apparently enthusiasm was not part of the job description

Phoenix Diaries
Personal stories of transformation, heartbreak, and rebuilding from ground zero.

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I was told I was too positive at a company built on art.

Not as a joke or casually.
It was said earnestly, like someone had finally identified the issue.

Photo by Wout Vanacker on Unsplash

“You’ve come in here all excited and happy,” she said, “and that’s not what the team needs right now.”

It happened on a Zoom call. Faces in little squares. Cameras half on.
I remember my jaw dropping. Not metaphorically. Physically.
The kind of pause where your brain goes quiet, and your body waits for a script that never arrives.

This was my job. Director of Growth and Development.
I’d been hired to bring structure, systems, and momentum.
To help people through change they hadn’t asked for and didn’t trust.

I knew the company was in a strange place. New hires. Quiet exits. A low hum of tension running under every meeting, like a fridge you can’t quite ignore.
I logged in, curious. Interested. Genuinely glad to be working around art and artists again.

That part mattered to me.

Instead, I found myself in the most joyless professional environment I’ve ever known.

They were artists. Painters. Creators. People who spoke about expression and freedom while gripping the familiar like a flotation device.
Any suggestion landed like criticism. Any forward movement felt personal.

I tried to meet them where they were.
Carefully. Gently. Over Zoom, which already strips the warmth out of everything.

One step at a time. I’m here. We’ll figure it out.

After one call like that, a woman asked to speak to me privately.

She was furious.

She told me I shouldn’t have tried to help her.
That what I’d said wasn’t what she needed.
That my approach was wrong.

I nodded at my own reflection on the screen, trying to understand how support had become an offence.

Trying to work out how I was meant to do my job without doing my job, which felt like a riddle with no correct answer.

Later, a consultant pulled me aside. Someone brought in specifically to help manage the change.

She said it gently, which somehow made it worse.

“Tanya, you’ve come in here all excited. That’s not where the team is.”

Then she said the line that lodged itself straight into my nervous system.

“You’re just a bit too positive.”

This wasn’t toxic positivity.
I wasn’t bypassing anything.
I hadn’t arrived waving affirmations or asking anyone to light a candle and manifest their way through organizational dysfunction.

I was new.
I was interested.
I was glad to be there.

There’s a difference.

The job got heavier after that.
Every call carried an edge. Every contribution felt faintly suspicious, like I needed to apologize for my tone before I’d even spoken.

Then came the launch.

It worked. Properly worked.
The thing I was hired to do, I did.

The CEO called. Praised my work. Gave me a significant bonus.
I remember standing in my kitchen, laptop still open, thinking maybe I’d misread the whole thing. Maybe I’d been dramatic. Maybe this was one of those “character-building experiences” people love to talk about after the fact.

The next day, I was fired.

Six months.
That was it.

The strangest six months of my working life.

Art, it turns out, doesn’t guarantee warmth.
Creativity doesn’t automatically make a place humane.
Some of the most stifling rooms I’ve been in existed entirely online.

I lost that job.
A few months later, I lost my marriage.
Then the house.
Then the version of my life that had felt steady and known.

The darkness arrived properly after that. No theatrics required.

I understand darkness.
I’ve lived inside it long enough to know it doesn’t respond well to platitudes.

You can’t stay positive no matter what.
That’s not real. That’s not human.

What I’ve learned is this. Letting darkness set the tone comes at a cost.
Letting it decide how much life you’re allowed to bring with you costs more.

I don’t stay in rooms, physical or virtual, that require me to shrink to be tolerated.
I don’t confuse heaviness with depth or cynicism with intelligence.

If my light offends the room, I don’t negotiate with that anymore.

I don’t deny the dark.
I just don’t let it run the house.

And if you’re reading this because you’ve been told you’re too much of something, let me say this quietly, person to person.

Too positive.
Too energetic or hopeful.
Too sparkly for the mood of the meeting.

Those labels have a habit of appearing when a space has already decided to settle.

We’re in a strange moment. You can feel it.
Old systems are cracking. People are tired. Everyone is acting like burnout is a personality trait, and seriousness is a moral achievement.

It isn’t.

If you’ve been asked to dim yourself to match a space that’s given up, pause before you do it.
Notice what it costs you. Notice what tightens.

Light doesn’t mean denial.
It means movement and circulation. It means refusing to let stagnation pretend it’s wisdom.

The world doesn’t need more people performing seriousness like it’s a job requirement.
It needs people willing to stay awake. Willing to bring curiosity. Willing to show up and still mean it.

So if you’ve ever been told your energy was wrong for the room, consider this reframe.

Maybe the room was wrong for you.

You don’t need to harden to be credible.
And you certainly don’t need to dull yourself down to belong.

Sometimes the most rebellious thing you can do is stay bright.

Even when it makes people uncomfortable.
Especially then.

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Tell me…

Have you ever been told you were “too much” for a space that felt deeply unalive? I’d love to hear what label they tried to put on you.

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