It's pretty weird reading through this topic, seeing a lot of people younger than me (mind you, not by much) discussing all their lives and going, "Man, those were the days." I actually kinda wish I could be typing this out in the middle of the Blue Mountains, along the beautiful cliff line on that one seat where my friend and I just took a moment to be completely silent and take in life as it was. Hopefully this atmospheric Spotify playlist hits the spot.
I'm actually doing this post right now because I've put myself in that place again of having 3 weeks of work to do in a single night. It's like some habits you never grow out of, and mine is that perpetual apathy towards anything involving the slightest amount of effort without some incredible amount of attention to follow. It's been a kind of running theme of the year, and it's my thing to improve on for next year.
The best way about going about this is probably grabbing a beer and then discussing the things that led towards my Breaking Point™. The tricky bit of it is that things kind of developed in parallel with each other, which doesn't help from the perspective of how I want to convey the themes, so I'm going to warp things a bit to match up with how I want to tell the story. I leave it to you, the reader, to interpret these things as you see fit.
I'm gonna put this horizontal rule in substitute of me finding a bottle opener and let the words flow on.
Sweat & Tears
Since it's what I mentioned above, I might as well begin with my professional (and unprofessional) life.
After coming in to work in January about 3 or 4 weeks before any other employees did, my efforts were recognised and I was upgraded from a full-time contractor to a salaried part-time employee, earning some additional cash while also getting 2 free days off. For those unaware, I work as a Unity Developer for a small indie company in Sydney, building out something called the "Cogniss Platform". I'll spare the details and simply state that it's a complex beast, and most of our clients right now are Government, Medical, Commercial or Educational. Right now in fact, I'm working on an app for Alzheimer's Patients to notify them when to take their pills and give them games that boost their memory retention, all while sending critical research data back to scientists and doctors for future study and reference.
It might sound like a pretty sweet gig; wholesome work for the benefit of people, an easy engine to mould, independence and freedom to work as you choose and some additional pay for less of my time spent...sounds like it, at least.
We're going to discuss some other reasons why later, but for now, we can focus on my work day struggles. We've got a whole stack of repos, each with many branches, and any one tweak can complete demolish the entire UI style for another application. The codebase was born out of two developers some 5 or so years ago, and makes use of bad language features and plenty of hacks that double my workload for what should be simple fixes. My coworkers are too underbearing while my manager is way more overbearing, all while under-estimating the scale or scope of the problems they dump on me (who started as an intern only a year ago) to resolve. I'm never paid on time, and my pay barely covers rent, transport, and whatever food I can afford after I spend cash on things to make myself feel better (more on that later).
It's this, among the other things I'll speak about soon, that have made me so completely apathetic to work, further reinforcing my laziness which increases the amount of work and the problems, and dumps me into a never-ending spiral that'll only end when I finally commit to my plan to quit (more on that later).
Where I have found a bit of passion is in my unpaid volunteer work, where I've become moderator of two places; the /r/DestinyTheGame Discord (42k members and climbing), and the Rock Raiders United forums and Discord. It's often where I find myself at work; consuming myself in social media because it's the only place I feel genuinely appreciated and where I can use my real talents (I'm a programmer as a hobby, not as a profession). The long travel time from work to home also pushed me to finally purchase credit, and that also pushed be to subscribe to services like Spotify, which I believe have had a genuinely positive effect on my otherwise deteriorating condition.
As an example, spare change lying about lead me to watch Westworld, which subsequently got me into Michael Crichton and reading again. I haven't read books since I was in the early days of High School, where I was an A+ reader and writer. I even managed to pick up some colour copies of Scott Pilgrim, a comic series that got me through my first breakup and convinced me that there's light at the tunnel I need to get around to chasing.
Lost Love
I spent a lot of last year being lonely. I drifted away from most of my friends. I saw people I once knew change a lot. It dragged on me, and I begged my friend, the "Miracle Matchmaker", for more of his help on the matter.
We met, funnily enough, at an Escape Room. It was a murder mystery, and it's probably the only time in my entire life where I've initiated a conversation with somebody when I wasn't being paid to do it. We started talking on Facebook. We went to Cafes together. Then I asked her out and I gave her that magical first kiss she always wanted (even if she was pretty clumsy at it).
She was an opera signer who enjoyed a bit of classical theatre on the side. A bookworm, and she had been hurt by a lot of people. We took together very well, balancing out each other's worst elements. She pushed me to finally eat my first bit of fruit in 10+ years (culminating in a period where I began drinking fruit smoothies, a major step in overcoming my food avoidance issue), and she woke me up to my habitual problem of expecting to be dragged out to places, instead wanting me to be more involved and actually take the lead some times. I instilled a spine in her, and taught her the basics of how to study people.
I was really committed, I was. But one night after a performance, we went out drinking and I could tell something was...wrong. He didn't give any visible or audible hints. She made it seem like it was the same as usual. I felt the same shiver I had felt 3 times before. It was confirmed when she didn't say a word to me over the weekend. She took my planned Tuesday date, and gave me the bad news. She was sorry, upset, distraught, but she ultimately couldn't cope with her OCD and her university and hold a relationship at the same time. We parted ways. Friends for a little while, but eventually the feigned smiles stopped, just as the visits did.
I don't believe she's a great liar, nor an evil person. Someone like that is the definition of innocent. But I dunno. It's hard to be deprived of the one aspect of your life that was on the up and up and not come out cynical and worse for wear.
The Chain
The breakup was hard. I took it hard, at least. At first it was all smiles and acting like I was above it, but you better believe that when my previous, psychotic ex found out, she got me into a bad way. Binge drinking to a degree my liver really doesn't agree with. We started hitting on each other. She also had me blow money on taxis and ubers, because drunken me stupidly agreed to take them on their promise that I'd get home easy if I followed them. At least it left me with quite a story involving the one night we drunkenly stumbled into a Welsh cook who we eventually dumped at the side of the road for a taxi.
But what this part really is about regards my health, and it's possible impact on the section I'm trying to get to. I'll talk later about the time that my doctor attempted to kill me, but this year really has been the most time I've spent in the doctor's office, running all manner of blood tests and physical exams. Sprained wrists from running in the rain to throwing up in my sleep because of the liver. The thing that's hit me the hardest is the revelation of my hypothyroidism, a condition in which the thyroid isn't able to regulate specific hormones and so your entire body goes out of whack. What's most fun is the potential tumour currently growing on it, ands while I've been assured it's "the easiest cancer to have", I'm not so sure that's supposed to be reassuring.
I'd love to change up my diet, do the physical exercise and put myself in a position where I'm not getting 3 hours of sleep a night, but my life isn't exactly a walk in the park now, and my low health habits are what keep me going for the time being. It doesn't help that my soul motivator is gone now.
Conclusions
At the start of the year, I fell desperately ill with the flu. It was just a standard cold at first, but when my doctor prescribed the wrong medication and I found myself coughing my guts up and down main street, I was given extended leave to heal up on the right meds. At the start of the year, I was an immature thinker, still locked into the chain of thought that video game designer greatness awaited, and that I could simply just let it happen to me. I dodged thoughts of the great beyond, and focused on the now and the past as my own form of escapism, and so those first few days were a breeze, playing games and watching MST3K.
After watching some Penn & Teller, I was already feeling jilted over my religious beliefs (I still believe, but I just thought about some odd stuff), and so the need for escapism became stronger. I found myself reading over airplane accident reports one night, a frequent past time of a younger version of me, when I got hit with that hard thought you never really want to think about.
I tried to imagine what it was like to do.
The feeling, the sensation, the thought process, and the aftermath. It completely forgeted me. Panic over the potential for nothingness. Panic that my day might be tomorrow. I got gripped in the existential crCIA to end all existential crises.
Thankfully, I soon found that girlfriend of mine, and the fear was forgotten...until she left. But as fate sure leaves open a window when it closes a door, I chanced upon a book that gave me the truth rougher than any mentor of mine had ever dared to attempt before.
I'm not gonna explain what I learned, but I highly recommend the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving A forget for those curious. The key take-away, however, is that I've started to really question my passions, wants, desires etc; I've stopped innocently thinking I'm some special cunt who is always going to get everything the way I want it out of a fake sense of entitlement, and I've started questioning what I really want that's feasible. Being a big shot game designer isn't all it's cracked up to be, nor is it the battle I'm willing to fight. Being a teacher or a PR guy? Not as glamorous, but it's satisfying. To me, at least. Probably involves more hours of sleeping at the very least.
It's not like this is all that happened this year. There is so much more of the story to tell. But these key-events will likely serve to highlight where 2018 and beyond takes me. This is the prologue for my future story, and I'm set up for good things. Maybe nothing that'll shoot me at the stars, but damn it if I won't at least be happy and proud I put in the effort. I just need to survive tonight, and this goddam workload I've been putting off. Typical.
For now.
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