Back into the Fray

It has been literally months since I wrote last. Even longer since I had anything of substance to say. I don't yet know whether or not this entry will be particularly enlightening or even worth reading at all (as most, if not all, of my entries tend to be stream of consciousness). For what it's worth, though, I've got to put something down.

It's been well over a year since I felt "normal." Starting around October last year, the company I work for decided it would be a good idea to move away from our mid-1980s financial software and into the world of Oracle (the company, not the database engine. There is a distinction). Little did I know at the time what that would entail for me.

I've worked at this company for going on 4 years now. I've watched the personnelle turnover range from 3 months to 2 years. At the end of it all, that is to say where we are now which is not an end, per se, I've become the most senior person within my group by about 3 to 3.5 years. The one exception is one of my bosses who has been here far longer than I have, but who has not worked so closely with the valuable sales and financial data as I have. What did, and does, this mean? In regards to migrating away from archaic software to new, module software, it meant, and means, I'm the only person with the expertise to get people the information they need.

From about January last year until today (and undoubtedly beyond), I have been buried beneath nothing short of a mountain of work. While I was sitting in meetings listening to people bicker and argue, my work piled up, higher and higher, as did the stress. And now, as I sit here, about a year after it all started I'm trying to think back, in earnest, to when the last time I actually felt something. Not tactile, but, rather, felt anything emotionally.

I've been going through the motions for so long that now I doubt if I've ever felt anything. I know how I'm supposed to respond to events that would normally illicit some emotive reaction. I am particularly good at telling people what they want or expect to hear. From the outside, I'm sure I look normal. But inside, I've forgotten some key things about the human experience. In short, I feel something like a robot. I know how I should feel. I even react appropriately. At the end of the day, however, the only thing I really feel is complete and utter exhaustion.

Within the last few weeks I've taken considerable time to reflect on the root of the problem, or, rather, what I perceive to be the problem. I say perceive because it occurs to me that since I question my ability to feel, I must also call into question my ability to reason (which really makes this entire entry moot, but I soldier on...). I believe it's my job. While I love what I do and I have strong ties to the company, it is slowly killing me. I have given 50-, 60-, 70-, and 80-hour weeks to his organization for almost a year. I've ignored my personal life, becoming ever more acerbic to my friends (who, by the grace of their own outstanding character, remain by my side). Until recently, I had almost no social life (romantic or otherwise) to speak of. I've let myself do all these things because I believe that, at the end, we, as a company, would be in a better place for it.

Now, after four years, I am finally accepting what I've known for the better part of my tenure here: it is a sinking ship, steered ignorantly into a future where it has no place by people more concerned with petty displays of power than the motto they so tenuously claim to espouse.

In an effort to seek out the cause of my emotional malaise, I've changed a lot of things over the past year. All of them for the better, and while I gained moments of respite, they were fleeting. So I'm faced with the only thing left that I can change: I need to abandon ship (my mastery of metaphors and prose knows no bounds).

So, welcome back to the fray. It's pretty hairy, but it's like I always say (+5 cliche points): better to be uncomfortable and dynamic than static and comfortable.