Jess Thoughts

Made the fear section move into Faith conquering Fear, and carried that theme through the ending.

Jess Diary — 17 June 2026

It is 2:00 a.m., and I should be sleeping, but my brain will not be quiet.

I went to the marketing job today and was at the office most of the day. It was one of those days that looked normal from the outside. Emails. Meetings. Campaign notes. People walking around with coffee cups like caffeine is a personality. Someone laughing too loudly near the printer. The air conditioning set cold enough to preserve evidence. Everything ordinary.

But inside me, something kept pushing back.

I do not hate marketing. That is the difficult part. I like pieces of it. I like understanding what people need. I like taking a messy idea and making it clear. I like when someone has a real problem and the right words help them find a real solution. That part feels useful. It feels honest.

But propaganda for getting people to buy useless stuff is the worst part of my job.

Sometimes it does not feel like we solve problems. It feels like we create them first. We make people notice a missing piece they never cared about yesterday. We make the fear big enough, urgent enough, personal enough, and then we offer the solution like magic.

Before the campaign, they were fine.

After the campaign, they feel behind, unsafe, unattractive, unsuccessful, unprepared, unloved, or left out.

The strongest sales tool is fear.

Fear of loss. Fear of missing an opportunity. Fear of not achieving success. Fear of the neighbors having more. Fear that someone else got there sooner. Fear of what you look like. Fear of not being part of the group. Fear of a wife leaving. Fear of a husband staying but not loving you. Fear of being old. Fear of being poor. Fear of living wrong. Fear of dying before anything is fixed.

It is all about our fears.

And business knows it.

Business studies fear. Packages fear. Tests fear. Polishes fear until it sounds like help. If fear opens the wallet, then fear becomes strategy. If insecurity creates clicks, insecurity becomes branding. If loneliness keeps customers coming back, loneliness becomes retention.

But the opposite of fear is not confidence.

I used to think it was. I thought if I just became stronger, smarter, prettier, more successful, more certain, then fear would leave me alone. But fear does not care how much evidence you collect. Fear always asks for one more proof. One more guarantee. One more reason nothing bad will happen.

The opposite of fear is faith.

Not blind faith. Not pretending everything is fine. Not smiling while something inside you is breaking. Real faith. The kind that says fear may be loud, but it does not get to be Lord over me. The kind that lets you tell the truth even when your voice shakes. The kind that lets you choose what is right before you know how everything ends.

Faith conquers fear because faith does not need fear’s permission.

That thought stayed with me today.

We have one client who sells a basically free product for a lot of money. They repackage it, dress it up, make it feel special, then build a whole marketing campaign around it. The campaign is aimed at older people, and the entire message is built around fear of losing retirement money.

I could go into more detail, but I probably should not.

Nothing is technically illegal. That is what bothers me. It is all carefully written. Soft language. Compliance-friendly wording. No direct promises. No obvious lies. Just emotional pressure placed exactly where someone vulnerable is likely to feel it.

Make the risk feel personal.

Make the danger feel immediate.

Make the product feel like protection.

I sat in the meeting listening to people discuss the campaign like we were choosing a paint color. More urgency here. Stronger emotional hook there. Less detail, more feeling. Make it clear, but not too clear. Make it persuasive, but not exposed.

I wrote notes because that is my job.

But inside I kept thinking, is this what I want to become good at?

Later I talked to Denise about it. She is my best friend, and sometimes she is kind, but sometimes she is kind in the way a person is kind when they refuse to let you lie to yourself.

I told her I hated that part of the job. I told her I felt like I was participating in something polished but wrong. She listened, then told me to relax. Not in a dismissive way. More like, “Jess, breathe first, then decide.”

She said I have to decide if I am good with staying there or if I need to leave.

Then she said something that hit harder than the work issue.

She said I really need to think about what I want in my life.

Not what sounds mature. Not what looks practical. Not what makes other people comfortable. What I actually want.

She said I keep putting my foot in the pool but never diving in.

Part-time jobs instead of full-time commitment. Ideas instead of decisions. Dreams instead of plans. Even with my personal life, she said I do the same thing. I wait. I watch. I tell myself I am being patient, but maybe I am only avoiding the moment where I have to choose.

She called it my “wait and see what happens” way of living.

I wanted to argue, but I could not.

Because she is not completely wrong.

Options feel safe. If I keep everything open, then I do not have to lose anything. If I do not choose one road, I do not have to mourn the others. If I do not fully dive in, then no one can say I sank.

But standing at the edge forever is not wisdom.

Sometimes it is fear wearing a better outfit.

Maybe that is why the marketing campaign bothered me so much. I spent the day watching fear being used on other people, then Denise made me look at how fear is quietly running parts of my own life.

And if faith conquers fear, then maybe faith is not just a feeling. Maybe faith is a decision. Maybe faith is the moment I stop asking fear what I am allowed to do next.

And then, because apparently one emotional crisis was not enough, he asked me to dinner.

The married guy.

I hate even writing that, because it makes the whole thing feel uglier than it already felt.

This is not some innocent situation where I am confused because a nice available man showed interest. I am not confused about whether I should accept a dinner date. I am not sitting here wondering if maybe there is chemistry or if maybe I should explore something.

No.

He is married.

He has been hitting on me for a while now in that careful office way where everything can be explained away if challenged. A compliment that lingers too long. A joke that feels too personal. A reason to stand too close. A message that did not need to be sent. A look that says more than the words.

And today he asked me to dinner.

Not lunch with other people. Not coffee to discuss work. Dinner.

I knew what it meant. He knew what it meant. That is what made it so disgusting.

I did not accept. I would not accept.

I am in a committed relationship with Jaime.

Maybe the world does not understand that. Maybe even Jaime does not fully understand what I mean when I say it. But I understand it. My heart is set on him. Not casually. Not halfway. Not as a phase. Not as a story I am trying on because it feels romantic.

Jaime is the man I want.

That is where everything gets complicated, because Jaime has not committed to me in the way I wish he would. Not fully. Not openly. Not in the way that makes the future feel solid under my feet.

He has given me a promise.

And I hold on to that promise more tightly than I probably should.

Sometimes I think he believes I am going through a phase. That I am young, emotional, intense, idealistic, and that one day I will wake up and move on to whatever comes next. A new city. A new job. A new version of myself. A new man closer to my age. A new life that makes more sense to everyone watching.

Maybe he thinks he is protecting me by not stepping all the way forward.

Maybe he thinks if he waits long enough, I will outgrow him.

That is almost exactly what Denise was saying to me, but from a different angle. Denise says I keep one foot in the pool. Jaime seems to think I am only standing near his pool until I notice another one.

That hurts.

Because from inside my heart, it does not feel like a phase. It feels like the clearest thing in my life.

Work feels uncertain. My future feels uncertain. My direction feels uncertain. But Jaime does not feel uncertain to me.

The uncertainty is not whether I love him.

The uncertainty is whether he will ever let himself believe it.

So when this married man asked me to dinner, it did not tempt me. It insulted me. It made me feel like he had looked at me and decided I was available for disrespect. Like my youth made me careless. Like my silence made me interested. Like my politeness meant he could keep pushing.

And then one of our co-workers heard enough to know something happened.

That was horrible.

I saw the look. Not shocked exactly. Interested. The kind of interested that becomes a whisper by tomorrow morning. The kind that turns into, “Did you hear?” before anyone knows the truth. The kind that makes a woman responsible for a man’s behavior because gossip always finds a way to make the woman the story.

Now the rumors begin.

Maybe they already began.

I hate that part. I hate that I can do nothing wrong and still become the subject. If I am cold, I am dramatic. If I am polite, I am encouraging him. If I report it, I am making trouble. If I ignore it, I am letting it continue. If I say too much, I am emotional. If I say too little, people fill in the blanks themselves.

There is no clean path.

And I keep thinking about his wife.

I do not know her well. I barely know anything about her. But she exists. She is not an inconvenience. She is not a footnote in his private boredom. She is a real woman somewhere, probably believing certain things about her life because he lets her believe them.

That is another kind of marketing, maybe.

Selling one version of yourself to one person, and another version to someone else.

I do not want any part of that.

Still, I came home feeling shaken. Not because I wanted to say yes, but because I realized how quickly other people can drag you into a story you did not choose. A married man can ask a question, and suddenly I am the one calculating consequences.

Do I tell Jaime?

That is the question I keep circling.

If I tell him, will he think I am creating drama? Will he get quiet? Will it make him pull back even more? Will he think this proves I am young and surrounded by distractions and eventually one of them will matter?

Or will he understand that I am telling him because my heart is with him?

I do not want to hide anything from Jaime. But I also do not want to hand him another reason to doubt me.

That is the awful part.

I am loyal to a man who still seems half-convinced my loyalty is temporary.

Maybe Denise is right that I need to decide what I want. But I already know what I want in love. I want Jaime. I want him without the constant feeling that I am standing in front of him trying to prove I will not disappear.

Maybe the decision is not whether I want him.

Maybe the decision is how long I can keep living on a promise.

Tonight everything feels connected in a way I do not like.

Marketing uses fear to sell people solutions.

My job uses fear to make old people buy protection.

The married guy uses charm and pressure and plausible deniability.

Denise says fear keeps me from diving in.

Jaime fears I will move on.

And I fear he will never believe I will stay.

It is 2:00 a.m., and I am tired of fear being the hidden engine under everything.

Maybe faith is the only way out.

Faith to say no clearly.

Faith to leave work that asks me to become someone I do not respect.

Faith to tell Jaime the truth.

Faith to believe that choosing what is right will matter, even if it costs me comfort.

Tomorrow I need to do one honest thing.

Maybe I need to shut down the married guy clearly enough that there is no room left for interpretation.

Maybe I need to tell Denise she was right, even though I hate that.

Maybe I need to tell Jaime what happened.

Or maybe the most honest thing is to ask Jaime the question I have been avoiding.

Is his promise a beginning?

Or is it just a beautiful way of keeping me waiting?

Fear asks me to wait.

Faith asks me to step forward.