Over the last month, I’ve been more quiet than usual. I’ve been less prone to speak when the opportunity presents itself. To be clear this isn’t because I don’t have anything to say, but rather because an ever growing part of me feels tired. I feel so tired on some days that it’s all I can do to pretend that it’s worth my time to bother considering the alternative.
I imagine the armchair psychologists reading this have already arrived at what I too presume to be the obvious conclusion: I’m depressed. Well yeah. Who wouldn’t be? Does this blog strike you as the kind of chronicling a well adjusted non-depressed about the state of the world kind of person would produce? Surely not.
Looking back I realize that I’ve always skipped along the surface of depression much like a well thrown rock skips across the surface of chaotic mountain lake right before a serious storm. It’s always loomed in my life, but never been given much chance to sit in the drivers seat… until the last few months anyway. Maybe the rock has lost momentum and runs the risk of sinking. Maybe it hasn’t.
In my case, it’s less like a lake of water and more like a lake of primordial soup. Only instead of the primordial soup representing the chance of something greater than the current sum of its parts springing forth in some spectacular plodding evolutionary fashion, it represents missed opportunities. Each passing moment seems to reveal more and more possibilities murdered by a litany of missed opportunities.
I should devote less time to this career of mine. I should devote less time to tech. But despite the fact that my rational mind knows this, the big dumb ape actually behind the wheel chooses to keep doing those things. I should devote more time to whatever it is I’m going to do next with my life because this career of mine is like Mr. Magoo teetering along the edge of vast chasm. Of course my rational mind also knows this, but the big dumb ape chooses to ignore that.
The end result is that I feel like I’m drowning. I’ve felt this way at various moments along the years but in earlier instances I was able to just “put my nose to the grindstone” effectively doubling down and mindlessly focusing on executing my standard behaviors and that has generally been enough to move past it after a few days or maybe a week.
Of course this isn’t the greatest development. Because as it turns out, the intensity of the feeling increases exponentially with the length of the bout. I don’t think I really appreciated this before now. I appreciate it now however.
So why am I writing this? Well its mostly so that future ITF can look back and remember this feeling. Because I’ll get through this… and when I do I’ll need to recall this from time to time as it will inspire me to take the next steps on the rocky path which I find myself on. This career of mine is ending. My life long love for tech is dwindling. My identity as it was is hence also eroding. I have to reinvent myself and become somebody else… at least in a matter of speaking.
I don’t want to become somebody else though. But at this point I don’t even know who I really am. I cling to previous behaviors, principles and ideas because they are familiar ground in an existence best represented by a dangerous and unpredictably aggressive world.
Yes I realize that this post probably doesn’t make much sense… unless you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve been here, you know. If you haven’t, you don’t. But sometimes you just gotta write what you feel, consequences and feedback be damned.