Sunday at Work

If I don't get this doc written right now, I'm fucked. My company will look foolish. My personal repuation will suffer. The reputations of my team will also suffer. And in a business for which reputation is the only currency that matters, it is a big deal.

But I just can't do it. I'm so burnt out. I'm so beyond caring.

All the time, my mind is buzzing, full blown ADD. Hopping from topic to topic, bouncing between bizarre intellectual persuits and dark fantasies of escape and freedom.

I click all around the blogosphere, stuffing my head with useless trivia: Pakistani politics, Fortran libraries for linear equations, memes and rants about memes, C++ windowing toolkits. All this minutia and trivia fascinates me, and my job does not. ADD, information addiction, these are often an asset in my work. But when my job become writing technical documents about studies about poorly designed Giant Robots, inability to focus on the boring suddenly becomes a career-ending shortcoming.

A life in Los Angeles is hard won: buying a house requires a life lead without serious missteps, without diverting from "the path". High school, college, work. Save money. Nose: grindstone. After a childhood of financial insecurity, I pushed forward on "the path". Here I am. I win, I win, but, I live a gray-colored life.

But if I run away, if I bail on this, I may be forever destroying my chance to live this life. Property values, dwindling number of on-shore engineering/science jobs. A precarious position. What if I bail and find that this was as good as it gets? What if I bail and find out that my unease is always present with me: a broken soul, a malformed API, and that I've screwed up my position for nothing.

Someone once said that you are what you cannot throw away. I cannot throw away this home, this job, this life. I am this home and this job. I hate this job.

Sigh. Listen to me whine. It is so pathetic. "Pity me." I'm pulling in a buttload of money and living in my own place. How dare I whine about how hard my life is, when China and India (1/3 of the world's pop) have a per capita under $1500 a year.