citizen of the planet

It seems like every day for the past few days I’ve had some sort of de-stressing outing. Thursday night I went out to Kelsey’s with a friend. Friday night I went a local bar with colleagues. I met with some friends for dim sum earlier today. Have I now fully recovered? Umm, I’m getting there, certainly. I guess I’ll wait to see how I feel on Monday after I’ve had my long run on Sunday.

Anyway, while eating today milestones were discussed. It was brought to my attention how I’ve already met so many except for the one that’s sort of making V-day more of an annoyance than anything. So often I play down the fact that my condo is coming, and that I have a car, and a decent job. I just don’t realize how well I really have a lot of my ducks all lined up in a row. That’s great, for sure. I mean, I’ve worked hard to get to where I am. I could be forgiven then, I guess, for worrying about what would happen if it all came crashing down. Given the economic climate, what if I suddenly lost my job? It’s entirely possible. How will I make car payments? How will I cover the mortgage? Having this fear is sort of a way to encourage myself to not be complacent, know what I mean? I can’t afford to have poor work ethic for an extended period. It would be one thing to be laid off due to circumstances outside of my control, but if I would ever get fired for being a slacker then I wouldn’t have any excuse at all. I’d be doomed. Doomed!

I guess what I’m saying is that I can’t take any of this for granted. I need to continue to work hard and strive to do better. All of this came to me while eating har gow. Go figure.

OK, so the post that I was promising is not forthcoming. Why? Well, really, the time has passed. Right now, I’m doing a little bit better than I have been over the past few days. My dark moods are just transitory, right? I’m a firm believer that everyone needs to go through these points every now and then. Not to get all philosophical, but it’s through experiencing them that I appreciate the brighter moments more.

See, I achieved burnout status through the workloads put on me in January. Frankly? I’m not over it yet. This past week has been wholly unproductive. Usually that would make me feel twitchy and uncomfortable. Instead, there’s just a mild numbness. I’m sure I’ll return to being productive soon enough, but I really just need to tear myself down before I build it back up again.

Trust. There’s a blog post brewing with regards to my state of mind for the past few days–and boy, it’s been rough as a couple of you know–however, I’m still not in a place where the words are flowing. They’re not necessarily blocked, but rather my thoughts are just a big tangle of ideas right now. There are many factors playing into the issue: work, mother nature, the time of year, etc. They’ve all converged in such a way that I’m just mentally exhausted and kind of numb.

I apologize to anyone whom I’ve been particularly emo to as of late. I don’t want to be, and I’m sure it will just be temporary. It’s only Tuesday today; Friday can’t come soon enough.

I’m going to crack. Seriously. There’s so much that I want to spill out here onto the page, but I can’t due to obvious reasons. Just…right now…when it already feels like you’re on the ground, [it] comes along and kicks you in the nuts.

There have been promises made that this upcoming span of time would be a little bit easier than in previous years. All of a sudden I’ve gotten wind that the promises would have to be thrown out the window. Well, fucking great, eh? I’m not sure what to do. I need to get more details–all will be clarified very soon, but honestly, I feel like a damn pack mule. Je ne suis pas content.

This past weekend I found myself in a bit of panic. This was all due to what seems to be a recurring dream for me. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it feels raw each and every time, making me feel quite uneasy. Upon waking I have to take a moment or two to regain my bearings and assess reality from make-believe. Yeah, it’s that bad.

Well, what’s the dream? It involves university and being on the brink of graduation. Usually, in the forefront of my mind there’s something nagging, telling me that I’ve missed the exam for some subject. It varies from dream to dream: French, Psychology 101, Sociology, English, etc. See, in the dream I apparently went to one or two classes of the subject but then decided that I didn’t need to go. I then totally ignored the class to the point where I forgot the scheduled exam. In some variations I’m in a panic over whether I’m actually still enrolled in the class. Sometimes I haven’t been to that class for so long that I was suddenly un-enrolled. Whatever the case, the result is that I suddenly don’t have enough credits to graduate–leaving me in a panic over how I’m going to make it up.

When I wake up from these dreams, my mind is often in overdrive trying to figure out when the exam for the course was supposed to be. Sometimes I have to second-guess what day of the week it is just in case I was dreaming that I missed it. Of course, THERE IS NO EXAM. After a few moments of figuring things out, I always realize that I have my freaking diploma, and that I’ve been out of school for a few years now.

Wow, so what the hell is with this dream? I think the obvious interpretation is a general fear of failure. Maybe these dreams come to me whenever I’m going through a particularly stressful time at work. During these periods there’s a definite need to perform. I guess I’m carrying that stress home with me. Why is it manifesting itself in the form of dreams of missing exams/skipping class? My academic career has had ups and downs. I’ve never gotten to the point though where I’d miss something outright from classes through exams. See, tuition cost too much to allow me to forget, know what I mean?

You know, for once, I’d like to have one of these academic dreams where I’m actually victorious. I can joke about not being the ideal university student. Why? I’m not. Period. However, I worked hard when it mattered. In the end I got the job done. What more is there? Why can’t my subconscious celebrate that achievement for once?

*grumble*

While I’m at my desk at work, more often than not I’ll have my ear buds planted deep in my ears. Sure, I like my music, and it allows me to get a firmer appreciation for some CDs that I’ve been on the fence about. Really, more than that though, it allows me to block out the rest of the environment. It’s not that I don’t appreciate everyone around me, but in some cases blocking the world out allows me to get more work done. I recognize that I can’t always be an island, so I sometimes compromise by having on ear bud in and one ear open to listen to all of the chat topics around me. Lately I’ve been hearing my name in conjunction with “he’s a machine!”

I guess that label started sticking after the work effort I put in during the last code launch. I worked like a madman to whip the queue into submission. And whip it, I did. I’m kind of proud of it, because otherwise the queue would have just looked overwhelming. At some point my project manager just started saying that I was a machine. Fair enough. It was in a good light, right? I remember one time I replied to a request with: “Acknowledged.” Some people picked up on that and imitated me in a robotic voice. Sure, sure: fine. Now that it’s been a while, I’m just tired of it. When I hear my name in conjunction with “machine” I have to roll my eyes. These days the usage morphed to something like “Oh, I’m sure Jason can do it in half the time because he’s the machine, you didn’t know?” Ugh. Whatever.

Yeah, I guess it’s in a sense of admiration. At the same time, when I think of the word “machine” I think of something that’s devoid of emotion or feelings. Sure, give me a repetitive task, and I can probably brute force my way through it to completion. It’s not magic–it just requires focus. Unlike some robot though, I feel fatigue. There’s a risk of me feeling bored and unmotivated if I’m lacking stimulating work. Prick me, I bleed. Call me a machine if you want, but I’m so much more.

*sigh*

You know, I was going to post pictures of cake for today’s post. No shit. However, I had a hard day at work today, so I just need to unload a little bit.

We’re currently in a period where projects are under test before going live. The testing was supposed to end today, but we were stuck figuring out solutions to one or two bugs. One in particular has been rather nasty in that none of us in house could produce the bug. People on the client end were able to produce the problem, but only once per computer, after which it could never be generated again. Most of us dealing with the bug spent many hours trying to find a viable solution, but nothing worked. A few of us stayed for about 10.5 hours from just trying to provide support. We were completely worn out.

As I was packing up for the night, someone not working on the release commented about how great it was to work on such tasks. I was genuinely puzzled when I got that comment. He continued to say that time flies and then oops, all of a sudden we’ve banked 2-3 hours overtime. I just laughed at it, but on the inside I was still dumbfounded.

Why should I consider having to stay overtime a good thing?
Why should I be pleased when I haven’t been able to solve this phantom issue?
Why is it supposedly an easy period when I’m expending so much mental energy just brainstorming for solutions?

I don’t know, man. I couldn’t help but feel that our priorities were really different. It’s late, and I’m still kind of down about today’s failure. I’ll be in tomorrow for 8 in the morning. I hope that we can make better progress tomorrow with a fresh set of eyes.

Until this current release is done (which will be this month at some point) I don’t think I’ll be able to sit through a relaxed period at work. Today I was feeling like I was fending off a barrage of issues. Just as soon as I finished one thing, something else was fired off in my direction. It’s always been my intention to shrink that bug list. Maybe I’m foolhardy, or just arrogant in my abilities, but I had no intention of letting that QA list get out of control. For the most part, I’ve succeeded. I mean, the list hasn’t really shrunk, but it hasn’t exploded in size. That’s great, but I have to ask what toll all of this has taken on me.

In this type of situation, I can’t help but feel that I’m under the gun. Some days I feel like no one else is taking this seriously. I know that it’s not true, because I’m sure everyone takes pride in their work; I just happen to have more bull-headed staying power than is healthy. I recognize that it would be unfair to foist my standards on everyone, but still.

So this recent pile of work finally got to me. I didn’t walk off crying or yelling at everyone. Nope. This time I just got up, stormed away from my desk and walk around town for 45 minutes listening to my iPod, just trying to cool my head. What was the trigger? Well, I was frustrated with this one ticket and off from the corner of my eye I see my colleagues goofing off doing some other business. That usually wouldn’t bother me because I’m prone to bouts of silliness too. In this case though, it was just the little bit that brought me past the tipping point. I resented the fact that I was working hard to keep things under control, and other people had the time to fool around. So, I walked off.

It’s harsh. I know that everyone gets work done. I know that things get accomplished. Some days I wonder though what would happen if I were to take myself out of the equation. People will manage, but that would require them to work harder. Is that such a bad thing?

Well, walking helped somewhat because I didn’t feel as angry when I got back. Instead though I felt defeated. I had no choice–I had to continue doing what I was good at: the job had to get done.

In a few weeks it’ll all be under control. I can look forward to it.