I'm a machine without a switch

I managed to avoid typing up any of my thoughts on my last two work assignments, which is probably for the best, as they were so jam-packed full of activity that my head is still spinning, even though I've been home for almost a week.

I still don't know if I'm any good at the majority of my new job, but I'm trying to be diligent about everything. That's all I can do. I'm used to being good at things right away (I'm sorry if it's rude to admit that — feel free to take it as a sign that I stay inside of my comfort zone more often than not), so it's a bit of a hit to my ego that the learning curve is this steep.

There are parts I'm good at.

It turns out, I can reassure the engineers who work in my old department — the freelance engineers I haven't even met before — fairly competently, just because I'm familiar with their workflows. It seems that most of the people who jump them suddenly in the dead of mid-morning to talk about what IT networking paradigms are being sprung on them mid-show don't really know what they do, so I think they end up feeling undervalued and put-upon. Because I worked in that area for a long time, it seems they mostly trust me, once we get to talking.

That's a huge relief. I'm always the most concerned with not fumbling the social aspects of my job, way more than I'm concerned about the technical aspects. You can always become technically proficient, but human beings form opinions of others quickly and don't revise them often. I always feel more afraid of the condemnation of others than of failing at a routine task.

I don't feel like it's oversharing to admit that. I think it's probably more common than engineers generally let on.

I'm working on trying to be more honest with myself about what's bothering me and what I like. I spent my entire twenties trying to answer the question "what do you like?" and my entire thirties asking "what do you want to avoid?" and I'm on the cusp of my forties, so I'd like to start thinking about "what environments support what I like and minimize what I want to avoid?"

I want to greet the morning with anticipation more often than not.

It's not like I greet the morning with dread, but I'm dead tired a lot of the time, lately. I fall asleep with a lot of worries buzzing around in my skull. Most of them have flown away by the time I'm ready to start running around, but not all of them have.

And there's a part of me, one of those buzzing worries, that thinks that all of the other concerns are pretty small beans, compared to what everyone else is dealing with. But it's no use to be down on myself for being in a better position than I was a year ago, even if the world is falling apart at the seams.

I like having intellectually challenging tasks ahead of me and I hate being unemployed, so isn't this the environment I should be in, right now? If the world was a really simple one and the narrative centered me, that's how it would be.

I've got my wheels spinning in some different directions on how to be a more integrated member of my community, but all of them are a few years out. It's depressing to admit, but until I have a stable base where I don't feel like I'm financially endangered, that's the best I can do.

I wonder if I'm making excuses. Once you reach a certain momentum, reacting at a certain rhythm, it's impossible to tell, anymore.

I came to the cafe to translate today, so I'm gonna do some of that, then tuck in. I spent all day devising some new monitoring dashboards, and trying to figure out how our alerting software works so I can design better alerts. I need to troubleshoot our logs presentation, and maybe the actual production computers will be online tomorrow. Buzz. Buzz buzz.

Is it pink noise…? Maybe it's more like the sound of machine chatter…?