Live, Die, Repeat
New year, same life. I barely had the motivation of past years when I came into 2015. I managed not to get completely wasted at a party on New Year's Eve, which is something. Spent the day after at my folks attempting to help them put away their Xmas stuff, which my mother is too stubborn to allow me to do. Came to find out she was out on the front lawn at one in the morning starting to take the outside lights down.
This really pisses me off actually. The only way I can force them to take my help is if I get there either days in advance or at least before my mother gets home from work, which would be before 8:30 in the morning. I just can't fucking do it all and it enrages me so much.
I'm offering my fucking help. I'm giving you my time. Instead of taking it courteously and accepting that you're fucking old and can't do it all yourself, you waste my time by rushing to get as much done before I get there. It's nothing short of idiotic. I'm even more angry about it looking back in retrospect right now.
The rest of the weekend was uneventful. The doom of working looming over my head kept me immobile on the couch for much of it. And rightly so, because as sure as the sun will rise by 7 AM Monday morning, before I was even in the shower, I had the Stinking Meat Packer's calling me because their Internet was down.
Hours of harassment, stress and intense anxiety later the problem was resolved with a simple software update. Which, of course, the contact there I deal with prattled on about for hours after (I should stress by texting me that night after hours) about how that seemed too simple a solution. Which, most likely in his way was him saying he can't believe it took me that long to figure it out.
It wasn't over yet though. Inexplicably, Tuesday morning at 7 AM I received the next emergency call about the owner's computer having an IP conflict. No clue who is causing it. He has a static IP set so such a thing should not even happen.
So after two days of not even being able to put a fucking toe in the shower before the chaos started I pretty much sat in front of my computer, staring at the monitor for the rest of the week. Not sure how other more mentally stable people deal with these scenarios, but for me it was the one-two punch that just knocked my motivation out for the whole week. The no-win scenario. I can't bother trying because I'll get nowhere, so I'll just sit motionless until the next thing blows up.
This is all stuff I'd love to tell my boss at my review in a few months. But, no doubt he'd want to immediately tackle the issue with some solution or another that will increase my stress ten-fold. And I just can't handle anymore stress right now. Even just typing about the past week's events my head feels like it is swelling up. And I don't mean that as some clever exaggeration I truly mean my head physically feels like it is throbbing and erupting.
As I've written before, it is all only going to get worse as this shithole of a client is moving locations this year. Recall I predict that they will decide to move the very week of my 40th birthday trip. And, also their servers are decades old and need to be upgraded. Something that has been known for years, but Taco was too important to do for them back when they were his client. Yet, this didn't stop him for going on about it at lunch Monday, when all the work would be mine to do. I hope my boss saw the death-look in my eyes as the conversation went on.
He told me at my review last year that it was his "fault" that the client got dumped on me and turned out to be a nightmare. Now it's almost a year later and nothing has improved. Where as I have never liked work, before this client came along I had a decent balance of things. It wasn't constant chaos. It was tolerable. But, since literally the day the keys were handed to me the first week of November 2013 I have been mired in shit up to my chin.
I'll never stop being angry about it as I recall over and over again the conversation with the Boss and Taco where they both said to me "it's very quiet there, nothing ever really happens"... This is what being shafted is like. How could I possibly care about what I do for this company going forward. Other than caring about doing enough to collect a paycheck.
Of course, my boss is no idiot. Sooner or later he will see that I'm doing just enough to get by, if he doesn't already. Then I'll have to endure some talk or another about motivation and my place and how everyone is working hard (which I would find to be a laughable statement at best).
Due to all this stress and anxiety not much has happened at home. The cat hair tumbleweeds are starting to collect. The couch is literally collapsing on the side I sit the most. The temperature here has plummeted back into the negatives and single digits like last winter. The curtains have all been closed. Whatever windows don't have them have been covered. It's dark and cold. And aside from going out at lunch to make sure the car runs, I've done little else. I never used to find winter so depressing but the endless cold affects me more than I'd like to believe.
And, the final point of stress for me right now; the planning of the birthday trip. I really would like to drive myself down to New Orleans. I have a slight sense of fear about making the drive alone, but really the anxiety comes from the question of whether or not the truck would make the journey. I had these same fears last time and it was all fine (although the fuel pump did die just weeks before leaving). And as if to usher in the new year, I had a mystery leak of radiator fluid at my parents on new year's day.
I just think it would be an incredible journey of reflection for me to be able to make that drive. But, who knows what will happen to the truck in five months. My luck would almost dictate that the thing would be unusable by then.
To sum up, it's a new year and my attitude right now is at one of its bleakest levels.
This really pisses me off actually. The only way I can force them to take my help is if I get there either days in advance or at least before my mother gets home from work, which would be before 8:30 in the morning. I just can't fucking do it all and it enrages me so much.
I'm offering my fucking help. I'm giving you my time. Instead of taking it courteously and accepting that you're fucking old and can't do it all yourself, you waste my time by rushing to get as much done before I get there. It's nothing short of idiotic. I'm even more angry about it looking back in retrospect right now.
The rest of the weekend was uneventful. The doom of working looming over my head kept me immobile on the couch for much of it. And rightly so, because as sure as the sun will rise by 7 AM Monday morning, before I was even in the shower, I had the Stinking Meat Packer's calling me because their Internet was down.
Hours of harassment, stress and intense anxiety later the problem was resolved with a simple software update. Which, of course, the contact there I deal with prattled on about for hours after (I should stress by texting me that night after hours) about how that seemed too simple a solution. Which, most likely in his way was him saying he can't believe it took me that long to figure it out.
It wasn't over yet though. Inexplicably, Tuesday morning at 7 AM I received the next emergency call about the owner's computer having an IP conflict. No clue who is causing it. He has a static IP set so such a thing should not even happen.
So after two days of not even being able to put a fucking toe in the shower before the chaos started I pretty much sat in front of my computer, staring at the monitor for the rest of the week. Not sure how other more mentally stable people deal with these scenarios, but for me it was the one-two punch that just knocked my motivation out for the whole week. The no-win scenario. I can't bother trying because I'll get nowhere, so I'll just sit motionless until the next thing blows up.
This is all stuff I'd love to tell my boss at my review in a few months. But, no doubt he'd want to immediately tackle the issue with some solution or another that will increase my stress ten-fold. And I just can't handle anymore stress right now. Even just typing about the past week's events my head feels like it is swelling up. And I don't mean that as some clever exaggeration I truly mean my head physically feels like it is throbbing and erupting.
As I've written before, it is all only going to get worse as this shithole of a client is moving locations this year. Recall I predict that they will decide to move the very week of my 40th birthday trip. And, also their servers are decades old and need to be upgraded. Something that has been known for years, but Taco was too important to do for them back when they were his client. Yet, this didn't stop him for going on about it at lunch Monday, when all the work would be mine to do. I hope my boss saw the death-look in my eyes as the conversation went on.
He told me at my review last year that it was his "fault" that the client got dumped on me and turned out to be a nightmare. Now it's almost a year later and nothing has improved. Where as I have never liked work, before this client came along I had a decent balance of things. It wasn't constant chaos. It was tolerable. But, since literally the day the keys were handed to me the first week of November 2013 I have been mired in shit up to my chin.
I'll never stop being angry about it as I recall over and over again the conversation with the Boss and Taco where they both said to me "it's very quiet there, nothing ever really happens"... This is what being shafted is like. How could I possibly care about what I do for this company going forward. Other than caring about doing enough to collect a paycheck.
Of course, my boss is no idiot. Sooner or later he will see that I'm doing just enough to get by, if he doesn't already. Then I'll have to endure some talk or another about motivation and my place and how everyone is working hard (which I would find to be a laughable statement at best).
Due to all this stress and anxiety not much has happened at home. The cat hair tumbleweeds are starting to collect. The couch is literally collapsing on the side I sit the most. The temperature here has plummeted back into the negatives and single digits like last winter. The curtains have all been closed. Whatever windows don't have them have been covered. It's dark and cold. And aside from going out at lunch to make sure the car runs, I've done little else. I never used to find winter so depressing but the endless cold affects me more than I'd like to believe.
And, the final point of stress for me right now; the planning of the birthday trip. I really would like to drive myself down to New Orleans. I have a slight sense of fear about making the drive alone, but really the anxiety comes from the question of whether or not the truck would make the journey. I had these same fears last time and it was all fine (although the fuel pump did die just weeks before leaving). And as if to usher in the new year, I had a mystery leak of radiator fluid at my parents on new year's day.
I just think it would be an incredible journey of reflection for me to be able to make that drive. But, who knows what will happen to the truck in five months. My luck would almost dictate that the thing would be unusable by then.
To sum up, it's a new year and my attitude right now is at one of its bleakest levels.