a box of chocolates is so not the metaphor i'm looking for

So at work budget cuts are leading to our contractors not having their contracts renewed. It's complicated and by that, I mean, bad. The positions will be opened up as positions in the agency, which is cheaper--yes, it's cheaper for the state to hire people directly to work with the agency than it is to contract--but the state cannot pay them what they got as contractors, and they're software engineers and specialists--we cannot afford them. We are going to lose them. We are very fucked.

All of us are getting jumpy because the the first group of contracts expires this month and we don't have the people to replace them. I mean, literally--it's not just education or experience, it's familiarity with the system itself and how it was built and how it works. One's wife works at the White House, to make this clear; they can find much better jobs than this one, which means the state will have to pull people who are missing either experience or familiarity; education, at least, isn't a problem. I could probably do several of the jobs--let me say, I read the raw code and it's not what I'd call complex to read or write, just repetitive--but we need someone with all three.

This is a long way of saying if I'm really out of sorts for the next two weeks, it's literally because I'm trying not to cry over my keyboard as they rush more and more priority jobs at us to finish before the end of August, then the end of December, while we scramble frantically. I had four priority jobs added today and we couldn't do any of them because they're rushing to get the system up and working and it's not working, which you see where this is going, and it's not like it's getting better after the end of August. Also, two of my favorite coworkers are leaving and that's fucking with my mood so much you have no idea.

Which is why I'm going to reschedule the gall bladder surgery thing, and not just due to utter terror of it. I did the math on the workload and basic fact; it literally won't get done if I'm not here. I mean, we don't have the staff, the resources, or the literal time in existence. I work on this system; if someone doesn't do my tests, and they won't, then that's a huge swathe that will not get tested and I have to use this system when I get back and experience suggests that failure is high. I bought a ton of cherry tea to get ready for this. Cherry tea makes everything better.

There is the faint possibility this is not actually what I'm supposed to be doing with my life, which is--irritating, I think. I mean, any of this. All of this. The thing is, I have my work and my life and my hobbies and generally, as I've moved around state employment, I get settled and comfortable and I don't always adore the work, I love the fact that most of the time, I'm fucking good at it, and I won't lie, being good at something, being very good at something, and occasionally being much better at it than anyone else, usually beats out whether I like it or not by a good margin. Also, and this is where this gets deadly, learning anything new is fun for me. The learning process itself has kept me doing things I'd otherwise hate, because I really love to learn and in the process get really good at things and again, you see where this is going.

I mean, I get this is the kind of attitude that can end in disaster or terrible jobs, but keep in mind stupid cheese tricks wasn't a fluke or anything; that's the shit I do when I need entertainment and my boss isn't paying attention.

There's also this; work is not my life. It can't be; I get some people can do that, but I can't, I have so many different things I like to do. I care about where I work for pay and how much it entertains me (see learning experience above) and the fact it's fairy valuable to social work, but that's as far as I go. Work is fun sometimes and boring sometimes, but its actual function is to pay for my computers, child's lizards, shoes, cons, trips out of state, visiting svmadelyn, playing with the stock market, concerts, my hobbies, and everything that encompasses my actual life. Giving it more importance than that never seemed like a good idea; that's a good way to go crazy.

This is the first time I'm considering school as more than a means to entertain myself, which is all I was basically doing it for (and because programming is really entertaining). I'm ridiculously close to graduating, but again, school is part of my entertainment budget, not a means to an end (though yeah, that too), so that changes how I've been thinking about it, as "something if I have time, go do that" to "perhaps a change in priority would be a good idea".

Maybe I just need something new to look forward to. July and August were concert, beach, svmadelyn, and VVC and now I don't have anything to plan for or look forward to like that until potentially June of next year. I need something new to be excited about after two months of high-level excitement and debt payoff and everything.

You know, I've never done New Year's in New York. I'm actually seriously considering this now. I mean, I have no idea what, but it's something to stare at thoughtfully and examine and then possibly do like I do everything: take three steps back, pretend I know what I'm about to do, and take a running jump to see what happens when I land. I don't think the universe owes me excitement; that's why I figure I should provide that for myself.

Comments

[concinnity]

I'm sorry work is tough. And I realize what an understatement that is.

Um, I went into graduate school to deal with my hard-work-as-entertainment thing, although my grad school experience is also a great deal of fucking around and not believing they pay me for it, you know?

Actually, have you considered computer security? You'd probably be frighteningly good at. There's a computer security hobbyist group in Austin that a fair number of professionals go to (which means, it can lead to jobs, if you're into that sort of thing).