I hate my job.
It takes so much willpower just to accept how dull and pointless everything feels. There is hardly ever any variation from the patterns and I'm pretty sure the information we're spouting out on a regular basis is already quite hard-wired into our systems (much more so than the “non-existent iPods” situation back in my Circuit City days). There's no life to it, no dynamics, no thrill. On rare moments, something comes up to challenge you, throw you a curve ball but none of them really get your blood going. All the time, it ends up being just a different spin on the same old situation. None of what happens really strikes me as worth my time or even of remote interest. Sure, concern and interest are easy enough to fake and I'm quite able of pulling it off without even the slightest slip but it all feels for naught. Sure, I get paid but Circuit City paid me too (and paid better, I might add) and there I didn't feel like every day was a monotonous repetition of the same old thing.
Just once, just once, I'd like to have a day if discord in this unrelentingly dull symphony. A day that will shake things up, change a couple of details around and throw us all (customers, reps and higher-ups alike) for a loop. But chances of that happening are less than minimal. A snowball's chance in Hell, to use the expression. Besides, the more things change around here, the less anything actually changes. There's no point hoping for anything different to happen because in the end, it all falls apart and becomes ruined because nothing ever escapes the monotony. I'm pretty sure it will soon come to a point where I can literally sleep through the job and still get it done, albeit with the odd glance to the screen to verify a couple of things. Yeah, by the end of my contract I would likely have developed that talent/trick/knack. I can practically do my job halfway good in that state as of now and I've only been here halfway through the deal (of which I still feel like I got the bad part of the deal here). So I'm stuck here. Bored. Dumbing down faster than I thought possible. Ready to sell my soul to find some sort of worthwhile, permanent escape from all this insanity.
Am I bitter about this whole affair? Maybe I am. Certainly, I wouldn't be complaining if I actually liked what I was doing. Then again, I liked what I was doing back in Circuit City but I complained there too. But that was less a matter of me liking what I was doing and more my not liking certain aspects of it. That was Circuit City. In Dell, it isn't the case. This is more a case of me disliking, no that's not the word, more like despising the very thought of doing what I do, of working who I work for and not merely certain aspects or bits and pieces of it. I honestly can't stand this whole state of things and want to slip out but, sadly, I have some reasons for my wanting to stay. Some of them are practical but others are...less so. Nevertheless, I have my reasons for staying in this dullness.
Firstly, this is a job and I'm damn lucky to have it regardless of how much I hate it. Sure, it gets to be the most monotonous piece of crap in all existence pretty quickly but it pays the bills. In this rat-bastard of a country, having a job with halfway decent pay (which I get but only marginally) is not just having a job, it is a bloody achievement. The mere fact that finding work in this country is so damn hard and finding a reasonable amount of financial compensation for an equivalent amount of work hours is damn-near impossible.
Second reason would be the people I work with. They're not all the kind of people I'd be happy to be trapped on a deserted island with but for all intents and purposes, they're people I can get along with. Well, to be truly and completely honest, not all of them. Just a few. Okay, maybe just one or two of them. Yeah, that sounds more like it. Sure, I get along with them well enough but I don't particularly feel like I would be willing to spend more time with them than work requires of me. In as much as I find them likable enough, I personally don't feel any level of attachment to most of them and that is not likely to change soon. I can be pretty stubborn when it comes to things like that, as I've personally noted over recent times.
Third reason is...well, that's a bit more vague. Vague enough for me not to want to divulge it here. This final reason I'm not too sure of if it even can be a reason. Not on grounds of validity but on grounds of actual existence. There is no certainty of it being there but it feels like it is. Naturally, feeling something exists is different from it actually being in existence; at least, that's how it is for me. But if this final reason is true and that it is there, I certainly have at least one good, solid, non-financial reason for staying. If it isn't, then even with the other reasons I'd likely think myself a fool for believing it to be so and for staying any longer than what my own sanity dictates. Sad, really.
For now, I try to break the monotony here and there by lashing out at something when I'm alone (the Calabite in me thrives on it, really). Usually, it isn't anything physical but more of a mental thing. An idea, a thought, a whiff of inspiration all rendered into just so much cerebral dust under a blaze of ruthless entropy. I feel compelled to take my ideas apart, reverse-engineer them to the point that it would be impossible to actually know what it was before I started tinkering with it. It happens so often it has become a fact of life for me. Take a thing of beauty and tear it apart. And I ask myself why I haven't been able to actually write anything worthwhile in so long a time. The answer has been staring me right in the face this whole time. I truly am oblivious to the obvious.
For the moment, I am seriously considering resigning. Well, half of me anyway. The rest of me wants to stay for the reasons stated above but mainly for the third, undefined reason. There are days in everyone's life that just feel wrong. Yet, in my case, this whole move feels wrong. Have I reached my limits? Have I finally snapped? Or am I just starting to realize I'm not cut out for all this, that in my existence there must be something more? I'm sure there are people content to be where they are, to be a part of the humming symphony of the corporate orchestra but me? Somehow, it doesn't feel right to me. I'm the guy who goes to the symphony to try and detect a single dissonant note amidst the sea of perfect instruments and harmony. It isn't searching for flaws or defects. It is the desire to see the unique and the dynamic even in the midst of the singular and routine.
So here I am. Pondering my options and seeking a way out even though I'm not even completely sure that I want a way out. Typical of me. Fighting with myself. Definitely a Demon of Factions but I can't quite determine if I'm an Impudite or a Calabite just yet. I can so easily slip into either glove but I'm seeking a more comfortable fit this time around, as compared to my previous one, a Lilim of Dark Humor with a couple of Attunements and Rites from Fire, Theft and a wee touch of Fate. Or the manipulative and refined Balseraph of Fate, formerly a Seraph of Creation, that came before her.
Life goes on, I guess. My leaving won't affect these people in the least aside from losing one of the people who can decipher the technobabble that is innate to our work. Damn it all. My free time is almost up and I need to get my mindset back to working. Night has fallen and I am young but I feel so ancient that I long to wither away and die.
Komm Seusser Todd...
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