Unfortunately, she's not my employee, so the result is still that she's here underfoot, out sick again, driving me crazy sucking snot and gagging on it. I swear she does this shit because she knows it drives me up the wall.

I really wish she'd choke to death on a big glob of it. "Didn't you hear her choking to death?" "No, sorry, Mr. Paramedic, I had on headphones because I was sick of listening to it."

I had forgotten how you can get sick of the sight, sound or even idea of somebody else.

I like my time alone. I need my time alone, even, but I feel like it's being robbed from me because she's out sick extremely often for flimsy reasons. (Her sickness is that she's sick of her job and doesn't want to go in, IMNSHO, and the state agency she works for is sorry enough to let her get away with it.)

I don't have anywhere to go to get away and still be productive. I feel so disconnected when I leave home, but at the same time, I hate being cooped up in here because I hate spending time anywhere near her anymore. (I hate spending time around much of anybody anymore, I think.) There's no winning situation.

When I worked in the language industry, at the last place I worked, I used to stay at work really late (I know I've talked about this before). Sure, there were reasons like I wanted to spend some quality time with the 'net or play Quake or ass around, but when you get down to brass tacks, I mean really talk about why I didn't want to go home, it was because Moogie was there.

Ideally, I'd get out of here. But I never have been able to swing it. I stay broke, I've been in debt forever. I was almost out, and then I had the stupid escapade with Xander trying to start a business, and then sinking into the lowest depression I'd had in years keeping me working barest minimums, and now standing on the edge of the abyss, staring into financial oblivion.

And do you want to know what's really scary? I don't care. I could fall over that edge and not give a damn. I even have a nice overpass picked out already, or more likely, a good place where nobody will hear the shotgun blasts.

I talked with Kirk today, just a little bit. He and Jason want me to build them a website for their sideline business, so we were talking about that, about things going on in the side, and some macro virus that he seemed to have contracted that one of his clients kept telling him about.

During the conversation, he asked me, "so you're still not working?"

Uh, it's the middle of the day and I'm sitting here talking to you, what do you think? Sigh. "No."

"When I talk to people on the phone and they ask about you they say, 'what has it been? A year since he quit the business and hasn't been working?'" Kirk fell quiet, and I didn't say anything.

Two thoughts flashed through my mind. First, if these people want to know what's going on with me, they can call me, y'know? Second, what's it to anybody else what's going on with me? Damned gossip is all it is, because people who really care tend to stick in your life.

But try to convince them of that.

"Well, I tell them, 'if I lived at home and didn't have to work I'd probably try to do that, too.'" Right then I realize, Kirk doesn't get it. He doesn't grok how not being able to function on a day-to-day basis is debilitating, maddening and reinforces the depression. How when I have good days I'm extremely productive, and start to feel like my old self, and when it unravels again and I fall back into the pit it hurts all the more because you knew deep down that it would never come back. Plus, there's the problem of knowing that you can't manage to get a job or go back to school because once it unravels while you're there, you're already committed. You'll just be setting yourself up for failure.

It's good that he doesn't know. But I wish he didn't make it out to be tawdry and ugly like that.

One last funny thought about working in that industry that was on my mind today: This is back in late August, 1998, right after Kirk had left for California. Xander knew that Kirk left because the owner had basically marked him out a hard task of increasing business and then tied his hands so he couldn't do what needed to be done to achieve those goals, and now they were falling on him.

Well, Xander finally got to move waaaaay down the hall to one of the plushy offices near the reception area (he hated it when I pointed out that my office was still bigger than his), and one day while we were about to play our lunchtime Quake game (the last time we ever played, actually, I think), I had renamed the Quake server "S.S. Titanic" in honor of the sinking company we worked for.

When he connected I heard him laugh all the way down the hall, around the bend. Xander shouted out: "Titanic, baby, I'm riding this ship all the way to the bottom!" (Okay, it was funny at the time.)

I guess he never expected to be made to walk the plank before she sank. [smirk]

Interesting passage I found while searching for information on a topic mentioned in the sidebar (here's the page it's from):

Although it seems paradoxical, doctors have known for some time that as depressed people's conditions improve - influenced by drugs or even spontaneously - a small percentage become, for a time, more suicidal or even suicidal for the first time. The period of improvement can represent a danger period for seriously depressed individuals. Withdrawn, inhibited, shut-down depressed people gain energy and spontaneity , while still significantly depressed, and this can translate into suicidal "energy." Treating depression is not a simple matter of just taking a drug. Careful professional supervision and follow up are necessary. Unfortunately, self-help treatment � say, with St. John's Wort - carries the danger of inducing some people to go it alone.

Maybe this is why I feel the way I do. Maybe I'm feeling more "energetic" so I am headed down the slope, skating from undirected momentum.

Of course, momentum is the product of mass and velocity. Invariably, at some point, you give up the momentum by reducing velocity (assuming constant mass). Unfortunately, that means that I have to crash into something at some point, so I should be bracing for impact.

I think I am struggling with a schism in my mind. The image of what I should have been, or could be even, perhaps, versus what I am and what I feel capable of.

I don't feel like I'm going anywhere. I don't even know if I want to anymore. The effort seems pointless; anything within the light cone of my current position in life is unappealing.

I know this is a defeatist attitude. I guess I don't know if it matters a whole lot one way or the other.

At least, to me.

Part of me would be jumping up and down saying, "hey, kick yourself in the ass and get busy!" However, the rest of me is doing its best to push that part into a chair and tie it down with phone cords.

I wish I really knew what I could do. I've tried so much before, and sure, some of it was half-assed trying, but at least I tried. Nothing works out, or at least not for very long. So I wonder where to turn.

I am one of those "work smarter, not harder" proponents, which means that I don't like to act without a plan. However, when you've done everything you can conceive of, or people have suggested that were within your grasp, then what do you do then?

You give up, 'eh? Maybe that's the lesson of the last year. Perhaps I've given up. I've always been a quitter, but this lingering existence is ridiculous. I have to figure out what I want to do, or just quit, for my own sanity and maybe everybody else who's around me, as well.

I tried to call Gurugrrl today, to leave her a message to ask her to call me. Around 10:00 PM my time, she hadn't been on, so I got offline since Urbane had to go, anyway, to free up my personal line (I figured if she did call, it'd be on my line and not the other one.

So I started to play freecell. A lot of it.

Has anybody ever written a program that plays freecell? Or has some sort of tournament rules for freecell? Or programs that try to play freecell against one another on one board? Why do I even wonder these things? Maybe I want to play some Core Wars or something. I never did work on that genetic algorithm scheme of mine for evolving Core Wars participants. I'm sure it's been done already; it's pretty obvious. But it sounds fun.

Finally, around 11:30 PM my time, I logged back on. She had left me an ICQ note telling me that she had just gotten home about a half hour after I had logged off, and she wasn't calling because I was probably asleep.

Sigh. Somehow I don't think that's the reason she decided not to call, but maybe it was, given that she was upset a little the other night when I was zoned out and she called, so I had to cut it off so abruptly.

I guess it's a consolation prize that she's speaking to me, at least.

restlessmind