I live just outside Philadelphia, so close enough climate wise. Given that your house is raised, I think it would look good anchor the house with something full with some height. I recommend a Laurel, which is evergreen for year round color and does well in full sun. Also consider large sedge grasses flanking the stairs.

You could stop there or you can make your garden beds as deep as you want for smaller shrubs and annuals. My only design suggestion is to place plants considering it’s full grown size and not what looks best today.

There are so many choices, the best thing to do is find a locally owned garden center and talk to the staff. The one near me is staffed with landscapers and, big surprise, they love talking about plants. They will know what works best for your region and will give you tips on planting and caring.

If others sing your praises, then you’re golden. To this day, I despise performance reviews and dread them every year and yet, every year they’re glowing reviews from my peers.

Being high-functioning often means you’re blind to your own contributions and more critical of your own work than others perceive. In time, I learned to accept the praise from others and blindly trust that things are ok even when every fiber of my being says I’m fucking up.

Sounds like you need validation more than anything. The points are bullshit if they don’t reflect the effort. Unfortunately, the corporate world is full of bullshit metrics to gauge productivity. I felt this at the bottom and nothing changed moving into “senior leadership”. It’s all bullshit and I encourage everyone to collect a paycheck and just go home.

I tell anyone entering the job market or is a young professional that absolutely no job is worth losing yourself over. Your skills change over time and will never leave you completely. I’m a competent designer, a reasonable developer but the most marketable skill that I didn’t actually develop until my late 20’s was soft skills—mostly developed by gently explaining to tech illiterate coworkers why what they wanted developed was impossible, impractical or just a bad idea.

I did this by treating every coworker as if they were the client. Be polite, professional and let them know that you want to solve their problems. It’s sounds stupid but people just put their guard down if you lead with, “I’m here to help you”. You can then have more honest conversation about all the bullshit keeping you from doing your job, provided it’s phrased as matter of fact and sprinkle in niceties.

The cruel irony is that this same disposition that started as a way to make me a more effective developer ended up pushing me into a position where I don’t get time to develop.

Over the 16 years since graduating, I learned that defining yourself by your career is often a trap. At least it doesn’t sound like you’re getting deep satisfaction from your work.

I burnt myself pretty bad going into the field thinking I was perusing a passion career and just kept getting kicked down for 5 years chasing a passion career until I found a work environment that paid decent and valued work/home life balance. In school I thought I’d never sell my soul, but now I’ve been working with the same people for a decade now and pretty happy about it, even with if the actual work is utterly boring.

Unless you’re a fortunate few that are truly passionate, driven, and lucky enough to land a career that fills your entire bucket, look for a job you can tolerate BUT with group of people that support you and your growth. In the end 2 years in is a drop in the bucket and you’ll see your career change directions over and over. You can always learn new skills or relearn them, so if this new job is something different to get you out of a slump, I say go for it. No one can answer for yourself but you.

I also hear people make the same claims against Alexa, but I usually start explaining what cookies are and how ad networks collects your data to more effectively target you. It doesn’t make fiscal sense to do mass audio surveillance when you already freely hand over your data.