That bitch at work in Journal of life stuff

I was going to write this as a letter to my mother. But in reality, I don’t want to share any of this with her. I don’t really need her opinion so much as I need to write down what’s in my head to help compartmentalize it, then think about each compartment one at a time.

Issue 1: Depression onset from doughnut purchase. Last week I’d finally gotten the weight loss bug back. I started skipping breakfast similar to how someone on an intermittent fasting diet would. That way I could eat candy at work instead of overeat on candy at work. Basically, you skip out on 300 calories for breakfast and you can eat those 300 calories in candy later in the day. Unhealthy? Sure. But when you are going to eat anywhere between 100 and 400 calories of candy in a day, well, not eating 300 calories somewhere else certainly helps. Between that and my back not hurting, I was losing around 2lbs/week. I was feeling great.

Then I self sabotaged by buying donuts. I should have only gotten one or two, but I got 4. I ended up with 4 days in a row of eating at or above 2000 calories. Bummer. And that loss of momentum put me into a depression and state of hopelessness. I sabotaged myself.

Issue 2: The bitch at work. I hate our CTO. No, Hate does not encompass the psychotic rage I feel. The fury I feel is so far beyond anything reasonable or sane that it warrants not mentioning. The last time I felt this angry I picked up my (250lb) mother like she was no heavier than a mop and moved her aside because she was blocking my path. That was the last time my mother ever dared make me angry, because in that moment, she realized I could, quite literally, tear her apart with my bare hands. It is most unwise to piss something off that is capable of punching a 4x4 post in half in a single hit.

Mercifully, I have not attacked a living target in my anger. Ever. Anger brings me great clarity and focus. Most people become irrational when under stress, I become extremely calm. I am, at my core, a sociopath. I was raised with just enough love to not go around murdering people and having sex with everything that has a pulse. But not enough love to see serving society as a worthwhile goal. That’s why I work in IT instead of as a cop or EOD tech. Both of which are careers that sociopaths excel in when they have been raised with love.

That anger is an issue unto itself. So really, I’m renaming this issue. It’s not ‘the bitch at work’. The issue is ‘my anger is bubbling and may show itself soon if something doesn’t change.

Issue 3: The bitch at work. I hate our CTO. Why? Because she told me to my face that I’m an idiot. I am not an idiot. I have been the smartest, or one of the smartest people in every room I’ve been in since college. I have been the hardest worker at every job I’ve ever had. And I say hardest in terms of ‘units of work produced’ not ‘number of times head was slammed into wall’. I found bugs in production hardware 150 other testing engineers missed for FOUR GODDAMN YEARS! I found data corruption bugs that nobody else found. I found driver interoperability bugs that nobody else found. For years. In years of testing, nobody found these.

I have started at nothing and mastered so many skills in my career that it isn’t even funny. And this bitch tells me, in our first meeting, that I’m an idiot and I need to just shut the hell up and listen to her?!

I should have quit on the spot. But I didn’t. Why? Because I’d just signed my new lease. Because I was stuck here, and I decided that sucking money out of my employer and not giving them my best effort was a better fuck you than any other alternative. It was better, except in one way. Which is the next issue.

So why do I hate her? Because she’s in a position of power, and doesn’t respect my opinion? Not everyone will understand what makes me angry. It requires a certain personality. Say you are excellent at cooking. You can julienne any fruit or vegetable that comes across your cutting board. And then you have to teach your daughter how to cook, and she refuses to follow your advice or use your methods. Instead, trying to repeat the techniques youtube taught her. Or that her school teacher taught her, or that a friend mentioned. You have to watch this person you want to see succeed sabotaging themselves with their own arrogance and stupidity. That is why I am so angry. Because I know exactly how to achieve her goals, and I am not listened to because my ideas are not her ideas.

And I’ve worked for people like her so many times in my career. I’m sick of it. I just want to work somewhere that people just listen to me. I don’t know how to solve everything, I’m not that arrogant, and not that knowledgeable. In fact, the ONLY things I ever talk about how to do are the things I actually know how to do. I just want my knowledge to be used, not ignored. I don’t want to go to work and explain myself. I just want to get on with my fucking job.

Issue 4: Selling the company. The number 1 reason I won’t help the bitch at work is because her goal is to get the company sold. Problems with this:

1. The company is in so much debt from 15+ years of funding raises that even if the company was sold for 500 million, all the investors would not get a paycheck. So my stock options would be completely worthless.

2. My stock options don’t start vesting until September of this year, and only vest at 25% even then. But I have to give the company a $1000 loan to buy them. So, in essence, I have to pay $1000 for the privilege of getting absolutely nothing when the company is sold.

3. The company plans to re-issue everyone’s stock options. The re-issued options will not vest immediately. This means everyone in the company who doesn’t get a closed door deal gets nothing. Just another way to clear the books so the investors can recoup their funds in this failed shitstain of a company.

4. If I help the bitch with my best work, I will be helping her sell a company to an unsuspecting buyer. My excellent work would be no different than putting bondo and fresh paint on a car that has a cracked frame from a bad front-end crash, then selling that car as brand new, never in an accident. Unethical motherfuckers do this all the time, and we’re doing it at a company scale at my work. I hate it. I refuse to be complicit in such evil.

5. The counter-argument to 4 is that I am so good at what I do that if I actually go work on the car, I will not put any bondo on the vehicle. I will cut the bad metal out and weld new metal on. The welds will be as strong or stronger than the original material. I will re-temper the metal around the welds to ensure it’s strong enough. For the area of the company I work in and am responsible for, I will make a good car.

And therein lies the quandary I am stuck at. The entire reason I needed to write all this down. Does anyone care if they buy a car that has been in a front end collision if the damage is repaired correctly, good-as or better than new? True, replacement parts won’t fit. True, other stuff might be bent because I will only repair the part I can see and work on. True, there could be other damage.

Can I make the claim that I was only ever there to repair damage, and how the owner of the vehicle marketed and sold it is beyond my control? I don’t think I can, purely because they have told me, word for word, exactly what they intend to do. I know they are going to market the vehicle as ‘no accidents’. So I feel it will always be unethical to help this person. Hopefully someone else’s shitty work will give away that the seller is full of shit, where my excellent work would go un-noticed.

Issue 5: Moving. I hate moving. But if I quit, I need to move. I need to move for two main reasons.

1. I hate new england. I fucking hate it. I hate the people, I hate the culture, I hate the roads, I hate the laws, I hate so much about this fucking place. I can’t tell you how many recruiters up here have told me I don’t know anything. Me! Fuck!

2. My monthly expenses up here come to somewhere in the $2400/mo range. If I were to move to somewhere cheaper to live, like many smaller cities in the midwest, I would be able to live for around $800/mo.

At $2400/mo I could afford to live on savings for around 1 year. At $800/mo I could afford to live for around 3 years. I should be able to find a job in a year. But I always worry that I won’t. I know I’m good, but I’ve never been able to pick my employer. It’s always begging for a job and I have to take what I get. I don’t want to work for a shitty employer again. Not again. Please no.

And I hate moving. I really hate moving. Just, the act of packing and unpacking everything. Changing addresses in 30 different places. Remembering all the obscure things that need to be changed. I hate it all.

I almost want to stay in my shitty job just so I can delay moving until my lease is up….ok, even my standards this is a dumb reason. My entire reason for that is not wanting to pay the 2 month’s rent fee to break the lease early. Ok, it’s not that stupid. If I manage to stay employed, in the time left between now and when my lease is up, I will have around another $15,000 socked away. So, that would buy me another 1.5 years in a cheap midwest city.

Issue 6: Stay or go? This is the problem. This is the reason I’m walking and typing right now instead of sleeping. It’s the question that will keep me awake. Do I quit my job or keep going to work? If I quit, I lose one set of stress (bondo, the bitch at work, etc) and gain another (money, when will it run out, where do I move, when do I move, how much does everything cost, finding a new job, rejection when on the job hunt, literally nothing and nobody in my life that believes in me and can tell me it’s going to be ok except me).

…that last one is the real killer. Let’s not forget, I was put off a weight loss trend that was going strong by fucking donuts. 4 goddamn donuts. What will happen when 3 months of applying and interviewing yields 0 job offers? What will happen when 4 months of applying yields me a job offer in the 40th percentile of market range, just because the employer is an asshole?

Issue 7: distractions. I could have written this during the previous 6 hours I have been at home. But instead I started writing this after bedtime specifically because I didn’t want to face my problems. Well, at least I’m facing them now.

I would rather play a video game and wait for things to get better than face my problems and make them better. Why? Because I don’t think I can actually fix my problems. Ok, one sec, let me unpack that for you.

I’m 50lbs overweight. I can fix that. Eat less. Hell, I used to be just 13lbs overweight around 2 years ago. Just to be where I am now I have already lost 130 lbs. I can lose the weight. But the weight isn’t the problem I want to fix. Being alone is. I lost the first 180 lbs because I thought if I got down to a normal weight women would like me. That didn’t happen. Women didn’t care. I got no more dates as a normal size guy than I did as an obese guy. I got no more second dates. The quality of the women didn’t improve. I did all that work to fix a problem and the problem didn’t change one iota.

That’s what I mean when I say I don’t believe I can fix my problems. I don’t think I will fix being unhappy at work by finding another job. I don’t think I will fix my weight issues by reducing the stress in my life or getting a pet. I don’t think moving to a different part of the country will fix the problems I have with the culture of where I am now, because almost all cities are liberal compared to even their own suburbs.

So why face a problem that won’t get better? Why make an effort towards and outcome that doesn’t change? At least if I hit this mob in a video game a better piece of loot might drop. And my character in game gets objectively better. And I can show that I’m better. There, the work->reward loop actually functions.

Yes, I know, that’s an unhealthy way to think. But it isn’t wrong. I did lose 180 lbs and get nothing to show for it. I did…What I need is to know I will actually change my outcomes if I do something. That’s the hope I need. That hope is gone in me. Utterly gone. I need that hope.

And for all the sadness you see, let’s be real. I bought a walkstation for my house because I wanted to be able to walk while using my computer. I’m typing all of this on that walkstation. I have checks covered 1.5 miles in the time it has taken me to write all this down. That’s 150 calories burned off. That’s more than the cup of sweet tea I had to try and calm my nerves paid for in exercise. I spent close to $2500 on the desk and treadmill to make this happen and a lot of the time I feel like it’s a huge headache because moving with a desk and treadmill is a massive pain the ass. But being able to walk while I type this out is helping my stress a lot. I do feel more calm. I do feel warm in the winters. I do feel more relaxed. I do feel hope because I can burn off the calories I eat in a way I don’t hate anywhere near as much as cardio or going to the gym.

That’s the dichotomy. I know I can change my life, but I don’t think the effort I put in will bring about the end result I want. It’s the difference between moving a pile of sand on a beach from one place to another. Yes, the sand moved. But it’s still a beach. You don’t have sand in your back yard, which was the actual goal.

I think I barely touched a key problem I have. I want to be able to pick my outcomes and have them come to reality. I want to be able to say “that person will be my wife” and have it become true in a not-evil way (buying a wife?! Fuck no! I want her to choose me willingly!). I want to say “this company will hire me and pay a fair wage” and have that job be with a great boss who is a good person, and a management team that aren’t scum. I want to be able to pick my outcomes, and that is…I don’t know if that is reasonable or not. I don’t know how much bullshit is present in the stories of the people who claim to live their lives that way. How much enhancing of the truth is happening.

Do I care about picking my outcomes because other people do? On consideration, no. I care about it because I am a type-A control freak. See the aforementioned example about someone cutting incorrectly driving me up the wall. No, that didn’t actually happen, but it is something that totally would drive me up the wall if it did. Ok. So that’s an actionable item. Research how to grow as a type-A personality and only worry about the things I have control over. That, is actually useful.

Some people tell me to go to therapy. Why? I can write here and do the same work in the same time without ever having documents that a national security letter can reveal are mine. I can be anonymous here. I can be unfindable. Just another name on the wind. Just another person with no real problems. The lies we all tell each other. That everything is fine.

Last updated July 31, 2019