Chocolate for Dogs

Okay, because everyone loves a good analogy, here’s basically what’s going on with me.

Think of goals as something behind a wall.  When you start going towards them, you’re given a hammer and a chisel, and you need to chip your way through to the other side of the wall.  Sometimes you have a thin piece of wall to chip through — those are the easily attainable goals, like making it to work on time, or making it through your dinner without spilling it all over yourself.  Sometimes the wall is thicker, and you need to work at it longer and harder — going to college, getting a promotion, saving money for a car or a house.  Stuff like that.

The strange thing about this wall though, is that it isn’t homogenous — it’s made up of different materials in different spots.  Some parts, even if they’re really thick, are pretty soft material and are easy to chip through — making it through the week without killing your boss or losing your mind are (generally speaking, at least) pretty easy to do, they just take time.  Some parts are really thin but made of something pretty damned strong, like making yourself skip your first cigarette of the day when you’re trying to quit.

And, of course, everyone’s different.  Some people get a bigger hammer than others; some get a jackhammer even.  Some people get a toothpick and a rock.  That’s another funny thing about this wall: you don’t know what tools you’re going to have until you get to the part you’re wanting to chip through.  Some people are great at math, and when they set their goal to be a physicist, for example, they find a nice sledge hammer and a huge chisel sitting in front of that part of the wall.  Other people can barely add and subtract; if they went to that part of the wall, they’d have to dig with their fingernails.

Are you with me so far?

I’ve been digging at several parts of the wall, with varying results.  I’ve dug at the computer programming blocks, and while I’ve made progress, I’ve scraped my knuckles raw and worn myself out.  I dug at the music block for a long time, and while I knocked a few good chunks out of it, that part of the wall looks to be about a mile thick.  I dug at one part of the literary block for a long time — the creative chunk of the block — and broke through fairly easily, but the professional chunk, the part where you sell your work, won’t budge.  Can’t even get a scratch out of it.  I can’t tell if the wall is just that hard and thick in that spot, or if I’m digging with the wrong tool set (either that I just grabbed the wrong tools or if it just came with a crappy set for me).  Either way, it wore me out too.

So, after digging at all these different parts of the wall for so long, I’m tired.  I’m tired of swinging that hammer, or rock, or digging in with my fingernails, whatever the case may be.  I’m tired to the point that I just about don’t care what’s on the other side of the wall anymore.  I’m tired of scraping my knuckles trying to get a little deeper.  And I look at other parts of the wall, the parts I’d planned on digging into, like being a teacher, and parts that I’ve already started on, like being a writer, and I just want to say “Fuck that, man.  That’s too much.”

So, in a couple of words, I’m lazy.  I’m tired and it’s making me not even want to bother anymore.

I need to run; already late.

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There was an article on physorg the other day, which you can read here, that kinda hit a nerve.  The gist of the article (it isn’t very long, so go ahead and read it) is that “hope” is a good weapon against depression.  A couple of quick quotes from the article:

“If you feel you know how to get what you want out of life, and you have that desire to make that happen, then you have hope,” Cheavens said.

and

Hope is different from optimism, which is a generalized expectancy that good things will happen, she said. Hope involves having goals, along with the desire and plan to achieve them.

Like I said, it kinda hit a nerve; hope is something that I’ve run out of over the past few weeks.  I have goals, in a way, but I don’t know how to achieve them.  I want to get published, I want to make changes at work, I want to get some of my music performed.  I want to write more — literature and music — and I want to be able to enjoy programming again.

The easiest thing to say is “Just keep trying and don’t give up,” but (for me, at least) that’s much easier said than done.  I know there’s always going to be roadblocks, and that nothing worth doing comes easy, but at the same time it’s difficult for me to keep my chin up when there’s no sign of progress at all.  Send out query letters to agents; if I’m lucky I’ll get a “Sorry, doesn’t sound like something I’m interested in,” without even asking for a sample chapter.  Make a suggestion at work; “We don’t have time to do that right now.  Maybe after we get (blah) done.”  (And, of course, once “blah” is done, we move on to “yadda-yadda” because it’s top-priority.)  I don’t even have the foggiest idea where to go with my music, who to ask or whatever.  Of course I can’t just up and quit my job to give myself the free time and the energy to work on another book or a symphony or something.

It’s tough to hold on to hope, to keep even mildly optimistic, when there’s always something that jumps in your way.  If I don’t amount to anything, it very well could be said that it’s from a lack of trying — at least now.  I’m tired of trying.  I’m tired of getting shot down at seemingly every turn.  I’ll give something an honest effort, and then it bottoms out on me.  I’ll pick myself up, try something different, and it bottoms out on me.  Then — and this is most obvious with my music — I’m too tired to try any more.  I’m too tired to build up the strength to hold on to that “hope” that keeps trying to fly off without me.

I need to run.

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Patti and I are all moved in to our own place now, which is nice.  Chloe’s happy; she’s got her own backyard again.  Charlie’s an official scorpion-hunter now, as she bagged her first kill yesterday morning.  (No worries, the scorpions we have around here are the little bark scorpions, which are little worse than a bee sting.  I’ve been stung by them twice before, when I lived out here in a previous life, and while they’re annoying, they’re not really dangerous — just a little painful.)

Still not completely up to par yet — I still don’t know what the fuck’s going on.  Got pretty homesick last night; our new house is vaguely reminiscent of the house we were living at in Washington, and pacing in the garage last night brought back lots of memories.  The day I interviewed for Engineered Software was the main one that came back.  That was a good day; lots of hope, lots of anxiety (but the good kind), driving through the snow and ending up in Lacey with a postcard picture in front of me as I came off the freeway.

Anyways…

I’m still not “better,” not yet at least.  I’m not as bad as I was a few weeks ago, but I’m still having the same thoughts; they just aren’t as imperative anymore.  I don’t think they’ll ever go away; I’ve had them (in some form or another) since I was at least 13, and even then they weren’t anything new.  The meds they have me on are definitely helping, but it’s not a fix — not by a long shot.  I’ve flip-flopped on the original plan though, going from one method to another and back again; still haven’t made my mind up on that, or when, or where.  Or even “if,” I guess you could say; everything else would fall in place if I just decided to do it, I’m sure.

I had my first session with my therapist last week, and he seems pretty decent.  I can tell that the sessions with him are going to be of the same “be happy with your current life” vein, instead of trying to figure out where I belong in life.  And there’s nothing wrong with that, not at all; the only drawback is that I already know that much, I’m just not very good at implementing it.  There’s always a part of me that wants more, that wants something different.  There’s always a part of me that wants a page in Wikipedia, that wants to be known outside of my family and my current employer.

And here’s where I start bitching about not having enough time or energy to accomplish that.  Blah blah blah.

Anyways, I need to run and start getting ready for my leg of the rat race.

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Not having such a hot time today at work.  I don’t know what the fuck I’m trying to do anymore, and nothing’s making any sense anymore — it’s all just fuzz.

Still having “bad” thoughts — the ones I’ve been posting about — and they’re getting worse as I sit here and stare at the damned computer screen, trying to figure out what the hell it is I’m trying to figure out.

Of course I can’t just go home, since we’re swamped (as always), and I’ve already taken a ton of time off — with yet more time off to go, with future doctors’ appointments lined up.  I’m trying to hold out as best as I can for those appointments — even though I know not to expect a quick fix — but it’s getting damned tough.  And I doubt Patti can take much more of this (well, me) either.

I wish I would’ve just stayed at Engineered Software in Washington; I couldn’t even handle that place though.  What the fuck’s wrong with me?  Why can’t I just relax and take life as it comes, like a “normal” person?  Why can’t I just be fucking normal?

Nobody said it was easy;
No one ever said it would be this hard…

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Don’t have much time, but felt like I need to post something anyways.

Of course, came back from my little “vacation”, and got bombarded with a ton of issues that happened over the weekend.  Had a nice little bitch-fest with my co-worker (via text messages) about things in general.  It looks like we might try going a little more agile — at least, we’re having planned meetings and releases now.  We’ll see how that works out; I’m not holding my breath.

I’ve started taking back to my music again — classical style (well, I consider more from the romantic vein, like Chopin or Rachmaninoff, but you know what I mean) — but we’ll see what happens.  I have no clue how to get some of my older pieces performed, but I’d love to.  Might try a local high school, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

I’d forgotten how much of an outlet music could be.  I’m not really “playing” right now, just putting notes in on the computer, but it’s something at least.  I need my piano back, and my guitar.  One thing that I thought of in the clinic was that it’d be much better to learn how to play Last Resort than to just play it over and over again.

Right now I’m kinda wishing I would’ve stayed there for a few more days.  They were planning on my care taking up till today; might’ve been a good idea.  Still not thinking quite right — making plans and stuff.  But I knew it wasn’t going to go away overnight; I do have a couple of appointments set up though, one with a therapist and one with a psychiatrist (for med refills), so we’ll see what happens.

It’s strange: I’m not exactly depressed, but I still don’t really want to put up with this shit anymore — well, with work at the very least.  Everyone at home is trying real hard to make everything’s okay, and that’s great, but it’s still not enough.

I wish I could be “normal”, with “normal” dreams and aspirations.  I wish I just wanted to be a manager at my company, or even just stay a programmer.  But no, I want to do something special.  I want to be noticed.  Like I’ve said in a previous post, I want a reason to have my own page in Wikipedia, for writing music or novels or programs or whatever.  Yeah, I could add my own, but that’s not the same — it’s like trying to surprise yourself with a birthday present you paid for.  And, besides — it’d just get deleted anyways, for lack of notability.

I only use Wikipedia as a measuring stick because that’s just what seems logical these days.  It could be Time magazine, or People, or hell, even the El Paso Times.  Like Trent Reznor says, I want to do something that matters.

This is a real sticking point between my wife and myself — she’s got her head on straight.  She wants me to focus on doing something that matters to myself and my family; I want to do something that’ll matter to the world — and directly, not some butterfly effect where I teach someone something and they pass it on and two hundred years later someone creates something because I said something in a stupid blog.

My wife and I got into a bit of an argument about this the other night, and I came to the conclusion that maybe that’s just not in the stars for me.  Maybe I am supposed to just be another ant in the hill, just one more number on a census taker’s notepad.  Just get up, go to work, come home, do it again the next day.  Maybe I don’t have a “big” destiny.  Maybe I’m not — to quote another good songwriter — bigger than my body.

Its easy to take the fatalistic approach with this too — if it’s meant to be, it’ll happen whether I want it to or not; if it isn’t, then no matter how hard I try I’ll always just be another nameless face in the crowd.  So there isn’t much choice but to just keep on keepin’ on, until the time comes when I can’t keep on anymore.

One last thought on fatalism — just to tie this in better with recent posts: People love to say “He died because it was his time,” or “He was taken before his time.”  How do we know?  How do we know when someone’s death is untimely?  If I decided to take that last step and keep the “plans” I’ve made, how can anyone say that it isn’t what was meant to be?  How can anyone say that it wasn’t my time to go yet, and that that wasn’t the way I was supposed to go?

See — maybe a couple more days at the clinic might’ve been a good idea.

Anyways, I need to smoke, take care of the dog, and get to work.

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I’ve have a very interesting few days.  I’d like to direct your attention to a previous post; it’s quite long, so if you don’t feel like reading it, that’s fine, but this post (as the title probably shows) is quite strongly related.

Wednesday (July 30th), was my wife’s birthday, and I gave her probably the worst present any husband could give to their spouse.  Tuesday evening I got my Xanax prescription refilled — one month’s supply, 1 mg pill twice a day (60 pills in total).  That night I took three of them — not that big of a deal, but of course I still shouldn’t have.

Wednesday, during work, I decided I’d take one because the day was getting to me.  That didn’t do much, so I took another.  Then another, or another two, or whatever.  So on and so forth throughout the day.  I came home after work, got into a fight with my wife — I can’t remember for sure what it was about, but I think the amount of Xanax I took was brought up, if not the subject.  She went to her sisters and I went to bed.

I don’t remember what time that happened, but sometime around 10:00 she woke me up, shining her iPhone in my eye, and I heard her say something along the lines of “No, his eyes are fine.”

After some debate, my wife and I decided I should go to the emergency room.  We checked in, expecting that they would keep me there overnight — maybe for a couple of days, even — for observation, hooked to an IV in a bed just to make sure I stayed alive.  Instead, they shipped me to a rehab/psych clinic.  (We’ve since decided it was mostly due to the suicidal tendencies I’ve discussed in recent posts, and that otherwise I would’ve just been admitted to the hospital; of course, it’s pretty irrelevant and not that big of a deal anyways.)

As it turned out — my wife had brought the Xanax bottle to the hospital, and did some simple math — I had taken a total of 40 pills throughout the course of the day — 40 mg of Xanax.  Not enough to be fatal (from various sources on the internet, I believe the fatal dosage is 331mg/kg for a lab rat, or something like that — I weigh a bit more than a lab kilogram, so I think I was fairly safe).  Still pretty bad idea.

So, I spent the past three days at the University Behavioral Health clinic, and while I hope to never do it again, I’m quite glad for the experience.  It was nice to see I’m not the only one who has trouble dealing with my issues.  And before I continue, I want to give a major dose of respect to one of the techs there — Sal (who’s last name I didn’t find out, and that’s fine).  The guy’s a goddamned saint in my book, to see the shit he puts up with and then turn around and still joke around and hang out.  The only person (in my opinion, at least) that I see who’s got a harder job is my wife; at least Sal gets a break at night and the weekends.  Patti’s got to put up with it 24/7.

I took a break from writing this post, and did some more thinking.  The people — the other patients, I mean — were cool as hell; joking around, talking about their problems without any shame (not bragging, but just discussing it, and that’s what we were there for, right?).  The group sessions were actually really great in most ways, but they did have one effect that’s come along after the fact, and it’s something that I’ve put myself through for a long time.

I obviously have issues.  I get burnt out.  I get depressed.  Even to the point of considering — hell, to the point of planning — suicide.  Why?  Because no one will read my book.  Because I can’t get my music performed.  Because my boss wants a project done in an unreasonably short amount of time, because some idiot in sales promised the customer it would be done in that amount of time.  What always makes this stuff so much worse is that I think about how upset all this makes me, and then I tell myself “Quit yer bitching, jackass.  You’ve got things great, so quit whining.”

One of the fellow patients had recently come back from Iraq — military, of course — and I’m assuming he was there for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  There were a couple of other military guys there too, and I’m assuming they were there for similar reasons as well, but it’s kind of hard to be certain of that — it was technically a chemical dependency ward.  I’m guessing it was a combination with them, like I was there for the Xanax overdose and suicidal tendencies, but whatever — that’s beside the point.  Anyways…

At one of the group sessions, this guy, 24 years old if it matters, talks about being on guard duty one night.  One of his buddies comes around and they stand around and bullshit for a little bit, and the guy (the buddy) walks off.  He gets a fair distance away, and a mortar round lands at his feet.  The guy — the one in group — calls the EMTs right away, but of course the other guy didn’t have a chance, and he was gone before the EMTs arrived.

So here’s some more insight into my inner workings.  Instead of thinking “Wow, I could have things a lot worse,” and being … inspired?  Maybe not quite the right word, but instead of feeling better and thankful that I don’t think I have things so bad, I beat myself up:  “This guy watches his friend get blown to bits right in front of him, not ten minutes after talking with the guy, and I want to kill myself because I can’t get a project out on time.  What a fucking pussy.”  It makes me think that I should be taken out of the gene pool, so that I can’t pass my weakness on and hopefully humanity will evolve to be just a little bit stronger without me.  I’m pretty sure that’s faulty logic, but the sentiment is more what I’m trying to get across and not any scientific hypothesis.

Two quick things before I cut this post off, because I’m getting a little lost on this subject.  First, even though I doubt any of them will read this, but I wish the patients that I was there with (and anyone else who is or ever will be in such a place) the absolute best of luck.  You’re good people who need some help, and I hope you get it in time.

The second is to the families of anyone in such a situation.  Stand by them as best as you can.  Pills can only do so much.  Doctors and therapists can only do so much.  And of course the bulk of the responsibility rests on their own shoulders.  But they still need as much help as possible.  Visiting hours matter — go see them.  When they get out, they won’t be “fixed”, I can almost guarantee that.  But they’ll be on the way, and you can bet they’ll still fuck up.  But when they stumble, be there to help them back to their feet as much as you can bear.  If you see that they’re about to stumble, grab them by the arm and give them a shoulder to lean on until they steady themselves.

I’m going to go have a cigarette and see if I can’t figure out anything else to do with my day; I’ve been trying to force myself to start back into music, but I built that wall up pretty strongly, and it’s a tough son of a bitch to tear down.

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Just as kind of an addendum from earlier:

My wife brought up a point after my earlier post — I could be committed for these past postings.  Maybe she’s right; I won’t argue.  I need therapy, I know that.  I plan on getting it when things sort themselves out a little better in the near future though (and, then again, maybe they’ll sort themselves out to the point where I won’t need it).

Fuck it; a padded room and a daily dose of thorazine sounds pretty goddamned good right now though.

On another note, and I’ll try to make this a little quick so I can get back to work, I’m kind of proud of myself today.  I’ve actually invented — well, sketched — a device that can deliver multiple injections into a central IV line, even with a delay between each injection.  I’m sure someone somewhere has already figured it out — probably even patented it and I’ll get sued for even mentioning it.

But at the age of 27 I’ve made my first electro-mechanical schematic.  Not that any engineer would probably make any sense of it, but it works for me.  It’s even rigged to allow a timer to be in-lined so that, not only are the injections done in a particular order, but there can be a particular delay between injections.  This is great for instances when, for example, you want to be knocked out before the paralytic stops your breathing capacity and you suffocate.

Fun stuff.  Like I said, maybe this will get me committed; I say bring on the straight jacket; I can’t handle the “real world” anymore.

Back to the grindstone.

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Had a talk with Patti (my wife) yesterday after work.  Kinda fixed things; at least brought some things out into the open.  Actually, I don’t think it “fixed” anything, just … well .. brought it out from hiding.  Things still suck, but at least it isn’t hidden anymore.

Spent yesterday doing research for my current (and related) project: “Better Left Unsaid.”  I think I found a better method, and it is something you can get “off-the-shelf” at Wal-Mart (at several places, actually).  Something quite a few people already have, I’m sure, and it’s something that’s you’ll hear about in the news every now and again as an accident.  Mostly painless — headache, nausea, little stuff like that.  Not painful enough to wake someone up from a normal sleep, and if they did wake up they’d probably just think it was being groggy or something (I’m sure there’s been times you’ve woken up in the middle of the night to take a leak and your head hurts a little and your stomach’s bugging you a bit, all for no reason at all).

Key factors: loss of consciousness within a minute.  Completely done within 3-10 minutes.  With some proper preparation, there’s nothing to clean up, and a warning sign or two will keep everyone around you pretty safe.  As for the side effects, if I’m not able to put up with them for the minute or so before I lose consciousness I’m sure I can get a nice little cocktail to make things easier — Oxycodone and Vicodin to eliminate the headache, Valium and/or Xanax to soothe the nerves for the last few minutes, and promethazine for nausea.  Already have two or three, and I’m sure I could wander around downtown for an hour or two and find what else I need.  (Actually, something stronger than promethazine would probably be better, but if I had access to that, I’d probably have access to various other chemicals that would make all of this much easier.)

Anyways…

The main thing that came out of our conversation yesterday was just the understanding that we need to communicate better; that’s very true, we do.  But it doesn’t really help much — “I’m sad honey; I want to end it.”  What do you say to that?  “Don’t worry; it’ll get better.”?  Yeah, and then it’ll get worse, and back and forth, an endless ping-pong match that’s making my neck hurt trying to keep up with it.

She knows me very well though; it surprised me, though I know it shouldn’t.  She said she knew I wasn’t going to do anything — she wasn’t scared that I’d just punch my ticket tomorrow or anything.  She was upset, but mostly because I don’t talk to her about it.  She knows me well enough, though, to know that I wouldn’t talk about it.  I’d just do it.

She’s right.  If I’m talking about it, I’m “crying for help” as they say.  If (or when, based on my current mentality) I decide that it’s not worth it anymore, it’s over.  I might make one last post here for the one or two people who actually gave a damn about this thing, then the url will expire and no one will ever know I was here.

So yeah, right now I’m seeking attention.  I hate that.  I thought I was better than that.  There’s better ways of seeking attention.  But at least there’s worse too — I could be standing on top of the Student Union at UTEP with a semi-automatic rifle.  But I could’ve taken the “talent” that many have said I have and focused it into music or literature and gotten attention that way.

I need to take the dog out and get ready for work.  Before I do though, there’s one thing that keeps going through my head that I want to write again — the last lines from Strength:

Strength to stand,
Or strength to fall.
I pray thee give me strength.

It probably doesn’t make sense in this context, but it runs through my mind constantly — I wish that I had the balls to either keep going and take what life gives at me, or that I had the balls to take the pill/bullet/knife/60-mph-cliff-dive and just get it the fuck over with.

Gotta go.

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Where do you go when you’re tired of traveling?

What do you look for when you’re tired of searching?

Where do you go when you don’t know where you want to go?

What do you look for when you don’t know what to look for anymore?

When you’ve nothing left to want, what is left?

Which is worse: the fact that I’m contemplating suicide, or that I’m such a friggin computer nerd that I’m actually considering writing a database system that will organize various methods - required materials (with cost), performance steps, clean up requirements, time to death, etc.

It’s probably just a stalling technique.  I already found a method that should work perfectly well; should be relatively quick (~30-45 sec), easy to clean up, a minor cost (~$100-$200), and fairly painless.  The materials aren’t off the shelf from Wal-Mart, but they don’t require a prescription or anything.  I’m not giving details; in the “do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do” mentality, I still don’t condone it.

The only things left to do are to alienate those around me so that it isn’t “that big of a loss.”  That’ll be the hard part — pissing everyone else off enough to where they either won’t care, or they’d help me out if given the chance.  With the wife, that’d be an easy one — fifty buck for a hooker and a hotel room, with hotel address and the date and time (when I happen to be at work) just happened to have been forgotten on my dresser before work. Don’t even have to do anything, just smear some lipstick on my collar and spray a touch of perfume on me (and make sure it’s not my wife’s).

Dad’s a different story; haven’t thought about that one yet.

I wish there was a to make sure there was some way to make sure she (my wife, not the hooker) was financially stable afterwards, but I’m pretty sure that my insurance company doesn’t cover suicide.  Besides, it’s only $50K — nothing to laugh at, but not very much in the long run either, after taxes and funeral expenses.  At least she’s still young enough to where she’d be able to find someone who’s a bit more stable than I am, someone who can give her the love and the life that she needs.

At the moment though, still researching.  I have three composition books: one dedicated to “scientific” research — I may still try and find otherm more chemically complex methods that would involve a little high-school or early college chemistry.  One of the books will probably contain random thoughts like this one.  The other one is because WalGreens was having a 3-for-2 sale.

Running late.  Need to take care of business.

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Loosely building off of yesterday’s post, things are looking a little better.  Nothing’s really fixed, and the only real difference is a bit more sleep, but things are in a bit different of a perspective.  Sleep will do that sometimes.

I was out having a cigarette right now and it dawned on me that there’s really only one main problem, and that’s my job (wow, that’s original, ain’t it?).  For some reason, I think that when I started I was expecting it to be just like my last job, only in the desert instead of the forest.  Big mistake.

There’s one thing that I remember that happened with my last job that put things into a different light for me.  I’ve never really considered how much major life events actually affect a person.  We moved a lot when I was growing up (mom’s philosophy: “Moving targets are harder to hit.”  What was trying to hit her was never said though; I’ve always hoped/believed it was facetious, but now I’ve read a lot more books and my paranoia is kicking in a little bit…).  Every summer — after I was eight, at least — I’d go visit my dad (here in El Paso, from California), and in eighth grade I flipped it so I’d go visit my mom during the summers (up in Washington by that time) and spend the school year out here in El Paso.  Change was pretty much the only constant in my life, just par for the course.

As you probably know if you’ve read this (or my original WP) blog long enough, I was having a tough time of it last winter — one of the main reasons we moved back out here.  I missed a lot of work, enough to have a meeting with my immediate supervisor first, then, after that didn’t sink in very well, with the office manager.  (There was still yet another meeting with my immediate supervisor; that’s the one that stuck.)

The office manager — great person, by the way; if anyone from that company happens to read this, tell her I said hi and thank you — brought it to my attention that I’d had a bit of a stressful year: a new job and a marriage.  There was much more said at the discussion, but that’s what’s relevant right now.

Of course, at the moment, it didn’t mean much, it just stuck with me and I kept rolling it over in my head, testing it out.  Eventually, by the time Patti and I moved back out to El Paso, I was a skeptic believer — like UFO’s, you know?  “Can’t say anything against it, but I need to see one to believe it,” sort of mentality.

Since we’ve moved back and I’ve started the new job, I’ve started to realize more and more that she was right — finally saw some strange lights in the sky, to keep the analogy going.  Two more major changes in my life and I’m having a hell of a time keeping my mind straight (as yesterday’s post should show to some degree, though it’s hardly a full explanation of what goes through my head on a daily basis).

So what happened?  Change used to be a constant in my life, and those were some of the best years of my life so far.  Well, whatever the reason, I can’t handle it as well as I used to.

Damn; that wasn’t meant to be that long of a tangent, but it kinda works so I’ll keep it in.  Anyways, back to the “my job is the problem” part of the post…

It’s definitely a culture shock to say the least.  I knew that going in; I knew that there’d be some long hours, that there’d be more pressure (it’s medical software, so it has to work right), and that it wasn’t an agile environment.  I knew all that stuff intellectually, which as I’m sure you know, means I pretty much just blew it all off.  “Yeah, yeah, twelve hour days, whatever.”

It was my own arrogance; I’ll admit that.  I thought I’d come in with all these great ideas and turn the company around into a place that was, more or less, just like the company I was leaving.

That’s something that’s probably gotten me into a hell of a lot more trouble than anything else: overestimating my abilities.  In this case, I overestimated my ability to keep up with the pace they have, and I overestimated the amount of influence I’d have.  Also, based on the lack of success of some of the refactoring and changes I’ve attempted, I’ve also overestimated my abilities as a software developer.

There’s a big difference between developing a web based pump catalog, and developing a software product that, if it doesn’t work correctly, could: 1) lose a customer (these customers are a bit pickier than pump manufacturers, because the software functionality can either save or cost them beaucoup bucks in a matter of days); 2) cause a lawsuit against said customer, because something got omitted or overlooked or lost in cyberspace; or 3) cause a misdiagnosis, leading to improper treatment, which in turn could again lead to a lawsuit, as well as injuring or killing a patient.

Nah, no pressure…

Back in Washington, I had a fairly well organized team to work with — the project manager worked right along side the developers; the testers were just over the “cubicle” wall; meetings were held regularly to keep up with everyone; the feature specification process and bug reporting process were both pretty organized.

Where I’m at now is a mess.  I have made my opinion known — more professionally and politely, of course — so don’t think I’m just venting behind their back.  (It’s a different venue, so now I can use different language; if they stumble across it, well, maybe it’ll get a bit more attention.)  I’m sure I’ve ranted about various aspects of the place on here before; if not, well, maybe some other time.  Real quick — major pieces of the development process that are missing: organized testing, general project organization (both the project and the company are pretty big, so that’s a little understandable), and communication.

Like I said, I knew I’d be walking into this stuff.  The problem is that I thought I’d be able to “fix” it.  I’ve discussed issues about this with my immediate manager on a couple of occasions — even sent an email over his head (he was included as well) — and so far all I get is variations on “We’re planning on doing this someday.  It’s getting better already though; it used to be a lot worse.”  (FWIW, I am supposed to have a meeting with the “big” boss sometime this coming week; I’ve worked with her before, and she’s pretty cool.  We’ll see what happens, but I’m not exactly getting my hopes up.)

I’m sure it was worse, but that doesn’t make me feel like I’ve made any kind of a difference.  All I’ve accomplished is taken his time away from other tasks so that I could whine a little.

You can say what you will about corporate momentum, about how long it takes things to change, blah blah blah.  If I was as good as I think I am, I’d have made a noticeable difference by now.  We’d at least be having regular meetings, or there’d be more getting done about automated testing and crap like that.  Something.

Instead, there’s the handful of unit tests I was able to squeeze out — the projects aren’t broken up into any kind of library structure, so unit testing requires refactoring before you can even attempt it — and that’s about all the progress I’ve made.

Taking you back all the way to the beginning of the post — if you’ve actually read this far (and I commend your patience) — this realization has put things into a different perspective: I just don’t belong there.  Maybe I don’t even belong in software development period.  I’ve made a few posts/articles that have gotten some good feedback, I can hold my own to a certain extent — I’m perhaps a little better than the average developer.  But I’m crap in a corporate environment.  And “a little better than average” isn’t good enough — not to me, at least.

That’s one thing that my previous therapist would definitely call me out on — comparing myself to others.  It’s a lose-lose situation, and I agree with that.  But I’m not where I think I should be as a software developer, and not just in comparison with anyone else.  I truly can’t see what I’m going to contribute to the world through writing software.  I’m not going to create an operating system, or revolutionize the internet.  Hell, I can’t even bring myself to write enough articles to really do much of any teaching, let alone cover anything new.  (Yeah, I know I could be spending the time I spent on this post for that; I’m talking more about mental organization than time in this case though.)

So where the hell am I going to contribute something?  What am I going to do that’ll get me a page on Wikipedia aside from adding it myself?  (Yes, that’s my measure of success at this point in time: the size of the article written about you in Wikipedia.  No article == you’re not important enough for the world to be able to read about you.)  Not a damned thing, most likely — and with the job I have right now, I have neither the time nor the emotional energy to do much of anything anyways.

Once upon a time I dreamt of playing concert piano.  Check this out: my only goal in life, when I was about 15-16, was to compose a piano concerto, perform it myself — even if it was just with the El Paso Symphony, I wasn’t pretentious enough to worry about Carnegie Hall or anything — and die penniless by the age of 25.  (Well, the last part was mostly a joke, though that’s normally how you get classical music to matter — it basically means dick while you’re alive.)

I saw the piano wasn’t going anywhere.  Well, an ex showed me that the piano wasn’t going anywhere.  So I took up programming and left music as a hobby.  I tried to get into a couple of bands, but of course guitar wasn’t quite my thing (couldn’t even get in a punk band — how bad is that?  “No, your power-chords aren’t as good as his power chords.”).  Tried doing some recordings of my own, did some with Patti singing (she’s a great singer; mostly for “art” music, but pretty good in general).  Wanted to do some recordings with my now brother-in-law, that never really took off.  Never got invited to join his band, either; that hurt.  (Hell, never even a jam session; I’m not a great guitarist, but I can play a few chords at least.)

Anyways, between that and other things — mostly life in general, either directly or indirectly — I pretty much saw that the Powers That Be just didn’t have music in my future.  I’ve worked pretty goddamned hard at pushing it out of my life.  And the cool thing about that, is it’s just like everything else: with enough practice and repetition, it’s really easy to force something out like that.  Seriously.  It’s a really weird feeling, too: I want to play, I want to get back into music, but I’ve cut it off too well — I’m more worried about paying bills and living the “American Dream” than that piano concerto.  I’ve “grown up” too much to give it a serious thought anymore.

So the year before last — roughly around this time, as a matter of fact — without having music in my life anymore, I started trying to write.  Like music, that quickly went from a hobby to a dream.  Then came Like Glass, which I think I’ve mentioned once or twice.  Couldn’t even get the manuscript rejected — nobody’d even read the damned thing.  So, aside from a couple of poems and one or two short stories, I’ve worked really hard at pushing that one away.  I think I’ve got it taken care of as well — not quite as cleanly as music, but pretty close.

Towards the end of Like Glass, one of the characters compares people to glass (hence the title — oops, spoiled the symbolism for you now, didn’t I?)  Among other things, she says that people are fragile, and can break easily; when they break, the shards can cut.

Dreams are like glass too.  They’re pretty goddamned fragile, and when they shatter, the pieces hurt like a motherfucker.  (And they kinda fly around too — those standing too close when it breaks might get hit by shrapnel.)

I had originally intended this to be a post about how I was going to try and focus on writing to get out of the job I’m at, but I think I’ve just talked myself back to where I’ve been the past week or so.  The job’s going to go no where, and I’ve done a great job of making sure the other two “dreams” I had are fairly thoroughly shattered.  So now I’m going to go back to just sucking it up, paying the bills to keep everyone else happy and maintain the status quo, because I really don’t have anything else I can do anymore.

Okay, I’m done for now I think.

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