I really think I'm just writing this to try and help put myself to sleep. I already hate it, and think it will be the kind of boring reserved for the thoughts that you have right before you should be falling asleep.
I don't hate my job. I hate how my job is making me feel, and I don't think I can continue to approach my job with even the pithy sentiments regarding the ease by which I tend to do it, or the time it has otherwise allowed me in marginally larger doses than other jobs I've had. I hate getting nit-picked over nonsense by my supervisor. I hate being a hand of generalized poorly-understood philosophy about what constitutes “safe” and our capacity to contribute to it. I hate that I have the same conversation. I hate that I'm sliding back into feeling very comfortable using the word “hate” liberally.
Increasingly, I don't do well with things that are going well. If I get to see a friend, I'm like a child who can't transition into bedtime (like now maybe) or cope with school. It could be like this, I think to myself. I could have someone I get along with. I could have a collaborator or someone to talk to that isn't veiled by the pleasantries of professionalism and arbitrary adulthood. My reports feel that much dumber when I'm reflecting on the kind of weekend I want to return to. My inevitable staffing discussions feel “lost” like some competition for the soul and memory of accountability and competence.
I applied for a new job. There's, apparently, a team inside The State that takes data and problems and figures out ways to address them at individual offices. You'd work at your kind of own 90-day pace. You travel. You get off at 4:30 and don't have to worry about getting assigned a new report from a family on fire. I really want this job. I don't really want this job, because it's going to have all of the same problems that go along with The State, but I really want this job. It pays a touch more. It might let me work from home. I won't have the opportunity to take my mood-swinging brain and dump the fallout in front of people who, probably deserve it, but will in no way serve me were I to try.
I'm so cognizant of the hurt. When I can't resolve my reality to a kind of middle ground, it's literal pain. Headaches are often. Shoulders go on lock. My stomach churns. My eyes might as well start bleeding. Every day that you learn something or you get a glimpse of the kind of pursuit that fills you up is a day you feel as intensely wasted on the practical and mundane. Is other nonspecific drama worse than feeling as though a corrosive agent is working its way through your veins? Is seasonal precarious labor to cover the ground unwise short-sidedness if you don't feel alive slogging through?
I've been in something of a panicked state for the last few hours. I did a little make-up work that piled on while I was gone “training” and interviewing. I got my laundry done. I've eaten considerably more sugar and shit than normal. I'm the kind of tired that should have never started to write this, but the sooner I fall asleep, the sooner I'll be on my way to work. Work is where I'll make my coffee, sit down and sink to hell in my chair, click around my screen pretending to be earnestly reading as I silently curse myself for being trapped. I'll sit and discuss my cases, get a dumb new list of things to do, and then find myself with half a day gone, ready to take an extended lunch, before breaking down again and rapid-fire knocking out what has become too heavy to keep avoiding. You know, healthy productive professional problem solving.
I want to watch more bad and weird movies with friends. I want to attack yard-work at twilight so I'm not sweating to death and without the day's mental exhaustion clinging to me. I want to take a sick or personal day tomorrow to help align my disposition with the overwhelming “fuck you” that's showing up more often. I really hope I don't do anything too rash, but the cracks are showing. I even used the word “hope,” if it's any indication the rough waters I'm swimming in.
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