OUTTATIME...

I have to face the music.  The only way this work is going to get done anywhere even close to on-time, is if I start working 10-12 hour days.  That's just a fact.  An unfortunate fact.  There's just too much work to do, and nowhere near enough time.  So I'm just going to have to man the fuck up and do what needs to be done.

But, I'm already so tired.

Blah Blurble...

I really want to write something to post here.  I have a lot to say right now.  But I don't particularly feel like saying any of it.  And I'm so busy right now, overwhelmed with so much work, that I can't even find the time to keep up with my email, much less write something.  And because of all the work, when I'm home, I'm just desperately trying to relax (largely without success), and don't have the energy to express things I need to express but don't really want to express.

That little slice of nothing is all I have time for right now.  And I feel guilty for taking the time to write even that much.  (Which is ironic, because the only reason I wrote it at all is to respond to the feeling of guilt I had over not posting.)

Tech Solace...

I got a wide-screen HD monitor for my work computer today.  It's beautiful, and it makes me happy.

I wish it didn't make me so happy.

I wish I had some other reason to feel that way right now.

Want And Will...

I've waited too long for Spring
Last year Winter never came
this year it wouldn't leave
And now I've waited too long for Spring
and now it all feels wrong
We should be halfway to Summer by now
but Spring has only just started
yesterday
was the first day
that we could really feel it
We opened the windows for the first time
since last Summer
and realized how long we'd been holding our breath
And, oh, this morning
it was PERFECT
in our home
The soft yellow light of our star sliding
through the slats covering our open windows
The soft, cool, petal-scented breeze blowing
through our rooms and halls
caressing my skin
I wanted to stay there forever
I've waited too long for this
I need it so badly
I need it to remind me 
that I am alive
and breathing
But I couldn't stay
I had to leave
There are bills to pay
I have to Take Care of Us
I have to work
I can't stay home
just because I want to play at feeling human
It took everything I had
and I stumbled along the way
many times
but eventually
I forced myself to do it
And I put on clothing
that covered my skin
so that I could no longer feel the breeze caressing me
And I closed the windows
to still the air
so that I could no longer smell the soft, petal-scents of Spring
And I closed the blinds
so that I was shut away from our star
and could no longer feel its warmth
or see its soft radiance
And then I stood a moment in the darkness
of our now ruined home
steeling myself again for what I knew
I had to do

In the office today
I could not stop wondering
whether I'm a Hero
or a Fool

Band-aid Blurble...

Still crazy busy.  It's rare that I'm actually tired after a day of work; even when I've got a lot to do, my job just isn't that difficult for me.  But I'm working really hard, and really fast, and I can feel that's taken it out of me today.  And I'm not even one-tenth of the way through this task yet.

Don't look up the hill.  Just keep your head down and keep climbing.

I'm going to need to find some time to write soon here, though, or I'm going to start getting depressed.  It hasn't started to bother me yet, but I know it will, and that makes me anxious.  Every day I don't write feels like I'm doing something wrong; like I'm doing something bad that I know will make me sick if I keep it up.

Saying that here helps, but it's a band-aid, at best.  It's not a cure.

Selling My Time...

No time to write today, but at least it wasn't my fault this time.  Got assigned to a project that needs a lot of work done but doesn't have a lot of money, so they need me to do everything ASAP and without charging a bunch of hours, or else they'll go over-budget.  So I need to just put my head down and concentrate on doing this work as quickly and efficiently as possible to avoid fucking up the entire project.  And that doesn't leave me time for a lot of other things like surfing the web or checking email; or writing bad poetry.

Here Come The Bastards...

I am burdened today by a most rare and unusual problem:  an over-abundance of subjects to write about.

I want to write about a party I went to on Friday night.  It was my friend's 40th birthday party, and it seemed that all of my oldest friends were there.  These are the people I would consider my best friends, and yet this was the first time in three years or more that I was seeing most of them.  Being surrounded by so many friends, and being confronted, viscerally, with just how long it had actually been since I'd last seen them, brought up a lot of different feelings.  And for a lot of other reasons, as well, this party ended up being very overwhelming to me.  I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about that evening, and the various things that happened there; almost too many to handle.  So, as much as I know this is something I should write about, and as much as I want to write about it, I don't think I'm ready yet.  I know that I thought and felt a lot about the experience, but I haven't been able to process it enough to know exactly what I thought or felt; to be able to say "I felt this" or "I thought that."  So I think I need to give that some time to sink in and settle, and figure out exactly what it is that I need to say.  It was just a lot to happen all at once, and I need to some time to figure out what to make of it.

So, instead, I'm going to write about something that happened to me at work today that pissed me off.

Our company's servers have a firewall that blocks access from the network to sites that are known to harbor potentially harmful code such as spyware or viruses.  That seems like a completely reasonable business decision to me, and I completely understand.  I always get a little twinge of guilt/shame/remorse whenever I click on a link and get the message from our server that the page I am trying to view is blocked by our firewall because it is a known malware site.

I have several webcomics that I read most days during my lunch break.  Two of these webcomics sometimes show explicit sex.  And today, when I went to read those comics, I received the message from our server saying that they were blocked.  But not because they were malware sites.  The message said that these sites had been blocked because they were pornographic.

This marks a significant change in the way our company monitors and polices our online behavior.  Up to now, it has been solely about protecting our company's network infrastructure.  But now, apparently, they have decided to start policing our morality, as well.

What pisses me off about this, is that I've never considered either of these sites to be pornographic.  Yes, they both show explicit sex, but I don't think that automatically makes them porn.  Porn is solely about explicit sex.  Its one and only purpose is to sexually arouse.  And clearly, these webcomics are not trying to do that.  Or, at least, they are about more than that.  One of them is a humor comic, making fun of nerd-culture, fantasy-tropes, and sexuality.  I've never been aroused by it, nor have I ever read it because it is dirty; I read it because it is funny.  (It is hilarious, in point of fact.)  And the other comic is a love story; very sweet and romantic, and also strange and psychedelic.  It publishes one page a week, and every once in a while (we're talking maybe every twenty pages or so) there will be a sex scene.  And while the sex is definitely explicit, it is still portrayed in the sweet, romantic style, a world away from anything that could be considered "hardcore porn."

Let me illustrate my point.  Imagine a movie - your typical, cliché of a sappy romantic-drama.  Now imagine that when we get to the inevitable scene where the male and female leads finally make love, the sex is shown explicitly.  There is vulva, erections, and penetration.  In every other way, it's still the cliché sappy romantic-drama - soft lighting, bad soundtrack, etc.; the only difference is that instead of just seeing the female lead's breasts (and maybe the male lead's ass), we see all of both leads, and they are actually making love.

Now, imagine your typical hardcore porn movie.

They're both sexually explicit, but they are clearly, obviously, not the same thing.

And that's what bothers me about this whole situation with my company's firewall.  I don't really care so much that I can't read these comics at work anymore.  That's not really a big deal, and I can just read them at home from now on.  What bothers me is that I have now been logged as someone who uses company resources to view porn.  And I don't think that's fair, because I don' think that's what I did.  Since they've labeled these two webcomics as "porn" there is no distinction between me and the person who tries to view hardcore pornographic videos in his office.  And I think that's a very important distinction to make!  It's hardly as if I was trying to log on to GangBangBitches.com, for crying out loud.

But our culture makes no distinction.  If it displays certain things - vulva, erections, penetration, semen - even once, for any reason at all, then no matter what else it may do or say, and no matter how else it may say it, that media is porn, and that is all it is, and that is all it will ever be.  And no matter what else it may do or say, and no matter how else it may say it, that media is exactly the same as Gang Bang Bitches vol. 8, and if you don't agree, then you are an immoral pervert.

For almost thirty-seven years now, I've managed to avoid getting caught in the hypocritical, puritan traps of this culture.  But today, I got caught.  And now I feel like I have a giant scarlet "P" on my chest.  "P" for "Pervert."  "P" for "Porn."

And now, for the first time in my adult life, I have to live in fear that any day now, the morality police are going to come knocking on my (office) door.

What Is Going On Here?...

I.

NEED.

THIS.



This is not a revelation.  I knew this to be true.  Still, knowing something to be true and experiencing the truth of it firsthand remain two entirely separate things.

I knew on some intellectual level that I needed to write.  I knew it was good for me, and I knew it made me happy.  But I was quite unprepared for exactly how it would affect me when I stopped.

At first, I just didn't have the time or the energy.  I was overwhelmed with work, both in the office and at home, and just simply could not make time to write; what little time I spent not working I needed to rest.  I just didn't have any energy left to spend on creative expressions.

But then things finally calmed down.  And I did have time to write again.  But I still didn't do it.  I was just so tired.  And I just didn't feel like it.  It still just felt like more work.  And I was so tired.  I just wanted to sleep for a week.

I still feel that way, actually.

I can't get to sleep at night.  And then I can't get up in the morning.  I can never get enough sleep, and I'm always tired.  I can barely even try to make it to the gym anymore, much less actually work out.  Everything feels like it takes ten times more energy than I have available to spend.  It takes all of my strength every morning just to force myself to get up and go into the office.  And now Yule is approaching, and I haven't even started thinking about it yet.  I'm so behind, and I have so much work to do, and I don't feel that I could ever possibly get it all done because I'm just so fucking tired.

Sometime last week, I finally admitted that I'm depressed.

Admitting that scared me.  Because I didn't know why I'm depressed.  And if I don't know why, then I can't do anything about it.  I just have to suffer through it.  I've been depressed for Christmas before, and it's been some of the most miserable times of my life.  My whole life, this has been my very favorite time of year, hands-down, no question.  And to not be able to feel any of the joy of that is just a terrible experience for me.  And then further, to be surrounded everywhere by all these bright, flashing, blinking, shiny reminders of How I'm Supposed To Be Feeling only accentuates the depression, and makes it worse, almost every minute of every day.  And then still having to do all of that work, but without the excitement of the season to motivate me?  Ugh, it's just a downward-spiral of Yuletide hellishness.  Those times, it's been easy for me to understand why the suicide rate supposedly skyrockets during the holidays.

So, I didn't want to be depressed.  I didn't want to have to go through all of that.  I wanted it to go away.  I wanted to feel better without having to face the prospect of another miserable Yule.  But eventually I couldn't ignore it anymore, and I had to accept the fact that I was clearly depressed.

But why??  Every other time I've experienced this, it's been the result of a relapse of some sort.  But I haven't relapsed this time.  Not even an accidental one (like the sleeping pills at Dover).  So what is it?  Too much coffee?  My occasional Winter pipe smoking?

With some help, I've figured out that it's most likely stress-related.  But if it's stress-related, then why can't I ever seem to relax or feel rested?  And what do I do about it??

This is the answer to both.

Writing is a coping mechanism for me.  It's pretty much my main coping mechanism at this point.  Meaning, the most effective one; it's not necessarily the most-oft used.  And I abandoned that coping mechanism right when I needed it most.  So not only did I take on a lot of extra stress during that period of heavy work, but then I also stopped doing anything to relieve that stress.  And it all started backing up, and backing up, until I was a complete mess and could barely bring myself to get out of bed in the morning, and had no idea why.

I've said it before:  it doesn't matter what I write.  This post is incredibly boring.  Who the fuck is going to be in any way interested about the boring minutiae of my middle-class existence?  But that isn't the point.  I just need to get it out.  I just need to open up, and let go, and empty myself into this machine, and get it the fuck out of me, whatever it is.  It doesn't matter what "it" is.  It is the process of reaching inside, scooping something up, crafting it into some shape or another, and exorcising it into the aether-net that is important.

Because that is how I cope now.  That is how I deal.  And without it, I'm not coping.  I'm not dealing.  I'm stagnating, and wasting, and weighing myself down with all the tons of shit I've left unsaid.

I used to turn to drugs and alcohol in these moments.  And they provided some temporary relief.  Absolutely they did.  But they didn't do anything to help the underlying problem; they didn't help me cope.  Often, they actually made coping more difficult to accomplish, and/or made the underlying problem worse.  This time, I found myself turning to video games in the same way.  An escape from the pain I can't deal with.  An escape from the problem I can't understand, or solve, or control.  I can control my character.  I can solve his problems.  And every time I do, there's that familiar little rush of dopamine; a sense of having accomplished something, however ephemeral.  And yes, that's certainly better for me than getting drunk or high, but just the same, it doesn't do anything to help the underlying problem, or help me cope.  It's just a brief respite from the stress; some temporary relief from the pain.  But as soon as I shut down the console, it's all right there, still waiting for me, unchanged, un-dealt with.  Only getting bigger, and worse, leading me to spend more and more time escaping.  Another downward spiral.

So, I need this.  I need this process.  It helps me.  It's not just a creative exercise.  It's catharsis.  It's therapy.  It's not just some fun little hobby that I enjoy indulging from time-to-time.  I know that now, more than ever, because I've experienced firsthand what happens to me when I don't do this.

And believe me, it ain't pretty.

Raging Election...

(With apologies to everyone at The Colbert Report, from whom I blatantly stole the title for today's post.)

Wow.  Okay, so, yeah, I didn't see that coming last night, to be honest.  I'm so used to getting shellacked in these elections that I fully expected to be facing a Romney presidency this morning.  But not only did we re-elect Obama, but for the first time in my entire life, every single person or issue I voted for actually won.  And then to find out that Democrats and progressive issues won over and over again all across the country?  I'm just kind of stunned, honestly.

Last night, Maryland became the first state to uphold same-sex marriage with a voter referendum.  How fabulous is that?  So did Maine.  And Washington state looks like it's going to follow.  And speaking of Washington state, they legalized marijuana there last night.  They didn't just decriminalize it, they legalized it; for recreational use.  And so did Colorado.  Wow!

I was fully prepared to be seriously depressed today.  Now I don't quite know what to do with myself.

If you have any suggestions for ways I could spend my day not being depressed, please leave a comment below, and I will take it under consideration.  Thank you, and Gods Bless America.



Quick note about updates:  We're super-swamped at work with another tight deadline, and another series of endless snags delaying the whole process (yesterday was a clusterfuck on a scale that I have never witnessed here in fifteen years), and so I've been working more long hours again.  But this time, there's the added complication that I've been off-site for a lot of it, and so away from my computer.  And at home, we've got a couple of big projects to finish up in the next couple of weeks, as well, and so that's eating up a big chunk of what little free time I have left.  I actually have about a half a dozen posts started already that I've been wanting to get out there, but I just haven't had a chance to finish them yet.  Soon, soon.

Just wanted you to know that I'm still here, and I haven't given up or anything.  Just a tad too much on my plate at the moment.  Busy, busy Backson will be Back Soon.

Whelmed To The Nth Degree...

I'm sorry about the total lack of posts recently.  I'm just really overwhelmed right now.  I have more work than I can handle both in and out of the office, and so the combination of the two has really been difficult to deal with.  I'm also still trying to claw my way out of my recent depression.  So it's just been difficult to find a way to make this a priority.  Which is stupid, when I think about it, because this is one of the only things that really makes me feel better, and helps me deal with all of this overwhelming shit.  But, ironically, the very fact that I'm feeling overwhelmed makes this seem less like enjoyable therapy, and more like "more work I don't have time to deal with right now."

Whatever.  Excuses, excuses.

I miss it here.  I hope to be back soon.

Sniff...

Standing at the sink, in the office kitchenette, washing the dried and crusted remnants of my workday's coffee from my mug, I had a moment.

I'm fascinated by those moments, when the most banal and mundane aspects of daily life suddenly collide with the profound, the mystical, and the transcendent.  They have an instant and unmistakable sense of Tao.  And this was one of those moments.  Standing at the sink, in the office kitchenette, washing a day's worth of old, dried coffee out of my mug, just like I do at the end of every day.  And as I stood there washing, the cleaning lady walked in.  An older, round-ish hispanic woman; really nothing remarkable about her at all, and normally the only emotional response I would've had to her presence would have been my usual feeling of white, liberal guilt at this reminder of my station, and my privilege.  But something else happened this time.  Something new and different.  Something I never could've expected.  Something simple, and ordinary, and yet utterly magickal.

Just a second or so after she entered the room, the gust of air raised by her entrance carried her scent to me, and I was instantly a child.

Ten years-old.

The beach.

A perfect Summer's day.

The sound of distant waves, crashing.  And gulls crying.  And children screaming in joy.

And a feeling I had forgotten.  A feeling of freedom and exhilaration and excitement and happiness that was so overwhelming as to border on the manic.  A feeling of certainty that these glorious moments of delirium were all that mattered.  There was absolutely nothing else to think about, or do, or say; there was but one single, solitary purpose to all existence, and that was to enjoy these moments, as much as we were physically able, for as long as our parents would leave us to it.  These were the best moments of our lives.  And even better, we were completely unaware of that fact.  Freed in the glory of our naivete, we swam away in the joy of "it can only get better from here."

Death and old-age were only abstract ideas, and things that happen to other people, or on TV.  Sex was still an exhilarating mystery, only just beginning to punctuate our daily lives with little electric sparks of sensation.  Work was something grown-ups forced us to do, and was to be avoided at all costs.  Playing was all that mattered.

Playing was the meaning of life.

And then I was back at the sink, in the office kitchenette, still washing the crusted stains of my amphetamine potion off of my mug.  In just a half-second, I had experienced my entire childhood, and then aged twenty-five years.  I wanted to cry.

I have no idea what that scent was.  Presumably, it was the cleaning lady's perfume.  Even now, as I write this, I can't recall the scent to memory; can't remember the sensation of it at all, but only the effect it had on me.  It's faded back into whatever dark corner of my mind in which it has slept for the past twenty-five years.  I don't know where I remembered it from, nor do I have any idea why it reminded me of my childhood, or the beach, or Summer, or the exhilarating freedom of having no responsibility.  And I guess I don't care at this point.

I can't ever go back.  None of us can.  I will never, ever experience those feelings again.  So I have absolutely no choice at this point but to feel incredibly grateful to have been able to experience them again, at all, for even a moment, as I washed my mug in the sink of the office kitchenette.

Sizzle Pop Blurble...

Been in class since 8a this morning; just got out.  Too brain-fried to post anything.  It was a cool class, though.  And I learned a lot.

So, worth it.

Must Be...

I should be working right now.

I know this.  I have so much work to do.  And if I don't pick up the pace and start moving it off my desk a lot faster than I have been, then I'm looking at some more late nights and weekends in the office.  And no one wants that.  And I'm going to be in a class all day tomorrow, and then I'm going to be out on Monday (going to the race in Dover, yay!), so that's two days of work lost, on top of everything else.

I know this.  And I know I don't have anything worthwhile to say right now, either.  All I want to do is put in some extra effort on this work so that maybe I don't feel quite so much like I'm drowning under twenty feet of icy, black code.  Icy, black, error-ridden code.

I know this.  But I can't stay away.  I can't ignore this space.  I want to, but I can't.  I can feel it, in the back of my head, all the time:  What are you going to write about today?  When are you going to write today?  It pulls at me, chews on me, and I have to satisfy that hunger, I have to feed that desire.  I can't ignore it, and I can't make it go away.  I have no choice; no say in the matter at all.

Words must be written.

What they say is irrelevant.

Just like me.

It's WHAT o'clock?!...

I have one piece of work I need to finish up before I can leave.  Then I remembered that I still had to post something.  Then I glanced at the clock and realized that I have to leave in half an hour if I'm going to make my SMART meeting tonight!

I don't know if I can even get my work done in thirty minutes, much less that and post something.  And so, as usual, the paycheck beats down the soul.

So it goes.

And goes, and goes, and goes, and...

Buzz...

Busy little bee today.  Way too much to do, nowhere near enough time to do it, and more work coming in every minute.  Worked through my lunch, ate through my work, and I'm so high on coffee I can see into the future.

It does not end well for me.

Still, nothing to do but plow forward into Oblivion.  Upward and Outward!

Fnord.

Vicious Circle...

Finally made it back to the gym today.

Once I miss a few days at the gym, I always find it incredibly difficult to make it back.  Not because I have trouble forcing myself to do it.  On the contrary, I really want to get back as soon as possible; I honestly enjoy working out, and I feel like crap when I don't get my workouts nowadays.  It's just that once I miss a couple of workouts, my body enters what I call The Crap Energy Loop.

When I work out, I use up energy, and I end up getting tired earlier, so I get to bed at a reasonable time, and sleep better, and wake up at a reasonable time, feeling well-rested.  So, once I miss a couple of trips to the gym, this cycle gets thrown all out of whack.  Soon a night will come where it is past time for me to go to bed, but because I have all this extra energy from not working out, I'm not tired.  I go to bed anyways, but then have trouble falling asleep.  And then I don't sleep very well that night, so when my alarm goes off in the morning, I'm still really tired and don't feel rested at all.  So then I end up over-sleeping trying to make up for the good sleep I missed the night before, which means I don't make it out the door early enough to make it to the gym before work, and so I miss another workout, and the cycle continues.

I've been stuck in the Crap Energy Loop ever since I got sick.  I missed a week of working out while I was at the AGM, and then I missed another week when I got back just getting over being sick, and it was looking like I was going to miss another week to the CEL.

The last couple of times I've been stuck in the CEL, I've been able to break the cycle by biting the bullet and working out after work instead of before.  I hate to do that (the gym is really crowded in the evenings compared to the mornings, and when I'm done in the office all I want to do is go home), but it uses up that excess energy, and gets my sleep cycle back on track.  But with all the extra hours I've been spending in the office on this project the last couple of weeks, I couldn't even find the time to get to the gym after work, either.

So, I finally managed to drag myself in this morning, exhausted.  Only fifteen minutes on the elliptical, and I was dizzy.  Didn't even bother with weights this time.  Just taking it slow; trying to get back on the horse without falling off.

Here's hoping I sleep like a baby tonight.

Magick Beans...

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Coffee, without whose potent magicks, this week would have been a complete disaster.

May your Beans roast Full-of-Flavor for All Times in the Percolators of your Dark Father.

Amn.  And Caffeine bless.

Working For The Weekend...

So, I figured out why I mysteriously felt the need to do nothing all this past weekend.

Apparently, I needed to rest up so I could come in to the office and work all this weekend!

Oh, joy.

Go With The Blurble...

I did absolutely nothing this weekend.

I spent three days sitting on my ass playing video games.  When I got bored with one game, I'd switch to another.  On a couple of occasions I didn't even bother to stop and eat.

It was Sunday before I realized that I hadn't even thought of writing or posting anything.  That made me feel pretty guilty, but didn't do anything to affect my behavior.

I have no idea why I was such a slug this weekend.  But I obviously needed to do it for some reason, because it was an absolutely overwhelming urge.  So, I'm trying to accept it and let it go and move on.

Now, I want to write something, but again, no time.  They just stepped up the pressure on the project I'm coding for, and it's looking like I'm going to be pulling 10-12 hour days for much of the rest of the month of September.  Not looking forward to that.  And it's not going to leave me much time or energy for much of anything else in my life.

Oh, well.  Nothing to do but go with the flow.  Even when it's a torrent.

Catch-up Blurble...

I have so much I want to write about from the last week, but I just don't know when I'm going to find the time.

I had plenty of time this weekend, but no energy.  I was still sick when I got home, and completely exhausted, so I decided the best way to spend the weekend was to do as little as possible, and rest as much as possible.  And it helped, but I didn't bother trying to write, as that conflicted with my whole "do as little as possible" policy.

And now I have the energy and the drive and the desire (in spades), but no time.  I'm only about a third of the way through coding this stupid, crazy project right now, and I just found out they want a working version to test by Friday!  I don't know if I could get all that done by next Friday, much less by the end of this week!  And, on top of my own instrument, they also just gave me a section of another instrument to code, as well, and that takes top priority.  Because apparently, I didn't have enough to do already.

Add to all of that the fact that I'm trying to catch up on all the stuff I missed while I was out last week, and I'm basically completely overwhelmed for the foreseeable future.

Pray for me, children.  Pray for me.