This is what I feel like at work often. Just thought I'd share it with you. You can skip it if it's not too interesting.
TIME IS CRAWLING, CRAWLING, CRAWLING.
IT'S 3:44.
BEFORE THAT IT WAS 3:27.
AND MANY MANY HOURS BEFORE THAT IT WAS 3 O'CLOCK.
I CAN'T STAND THIS ANYMORE.
THIS STUFF SUCKS.
UI, ERRORS, EXCEPTION HANDLING.
WHO CARES?
WHAT'S THE POINT??
I HAVE TO MAKE IT TILL 5 P.M. I DON'T THINK I CAN DO IT.
WORSE STILL, WHEN I LOOK BACK AT WHAT I HAVE DONE,
IT DOESN'T SEEM LIKE MUCH - BOTH IN TERMS OF QUANTITY AND QUALITY.
"AT LEAST YOU USE YOUR HEAD IN THIS TYPE OF WORK"
BUT I DON'T.
OR MAYBE IT'S THAT I WANT TO BE USING MY HEART INSTEAD.
I GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE. I WANT TO TELL KATHY "SORRY, IT WAS A MISTAKE. I'M NOT RIGHT FOR THIS JOB BECAUSE THIS JOB IS NOT RIGHT FOR ME." SHE MIGHT EVEN BUY THAT & LET ME GO WITH NO BAD FEELINGS.
BUT, THEN, WHAT WILL I BE LEFT WITH? LOTS - FREEDOM TO LIVE, TO EXPERIENCE, TO TRY THINGS I FEEL LIKE TRYING - THINGS THAT ARE ENJOYABLE INANDOF THEMSELVES TOTALLY. HOW CAN ANYONE FIND UI, ERRORS, WHATNOT ENJOYABLE?
WHAT WILL I BE LEFT WITHOUT? $50 PER HOUR/ $400 PER DAY/ $2,000 PER WEEK/ $8,000 PER MONTH /$96,000 PER YEAR. AND HOPEFULLY LESS MUNDANE STUFF TO HAVE TO DO.
If someone told me right now - "I'll give you $50 if you look at this stuff over the next hour. Or you can ride your bike home and read a book or go for a walk or whatever and I'll give you $0." I would take the latter no probleme. But could I say that about tomorrow, let's see : "$400 to stay here, or $0 to drive to the coast and watch the sunset?" Yes I could and would. How about next week: "$2000 or spend the week with Peter in Calgary?" Peter. How about next month: "$8000 or embark on another path in life (learn languages?)". This is getting tougher now. What if some amount of mundaneness lies down every path, but the other paths don't pay monetarily? Do they pay in other ways? Do they allow me to use my heart? There's got to be something that does. I won't know if I don't try it. So, what's it going to be? Willing to wave bye-bye to that $8000 or not? Well, maybe I want to have that $96000 (or maybe more like $60,000 after expenses) as a very comfy cushion in case your heart can't feed you. Yeah, but how much is enough for a comfy cushion anyway? You got $70,000 in the bank right now. Another $60,000 and you'll have $130,000. How much is enough?
I DON'T KNOW. I DON'T KNOW.
I was very close to quitting last week. So close that I had to drag Randy to have lunch with me to get him to convince me otherwise. He said that I should try to make a positive difference at work by doing good work. I should challenge myself to improve my work. This sounded good. This sounded like it would make the work more bearable.
But, today, I don't know how to make it better. All my methods are returning a DSSError if they can't do what they've been asked to do or if they are being asked to check the validity of something that isn't valid. I still have to fill in the details of the validity checks. But, when I'm implementing the details, I start having strong doubts in my DSSError mechanism, it doesn't seem like a wonderful way of doing things, but I don't know any better way. And the details require me to consider things like "If they change the category on this catalog unit, and this catalog unit is being used in a rule somewhere, that will cause the rule to become invalid, but how do I detect this? a rule lives inside a group (a CDCOGBusinessConstraintGroup) inside a group inside... (there's a hierarchy of groups which is used to determine the order in which rules should fire - i.e. they prioritize the rules) ... inside a group inside a catalogUnit (this unit being the unit whose value will be determined by that rule). A rule is an instance of CDCOGBusinessConstraint. CDCOGBusinessConstraint has a conditionList, a trueConclusion, and a falseConclusion. I have to check each of these to make sure the catalog unit is not being used in any of these - but only if any of these is actually referring to the group along with the catalog unit. each of trueConclusion and falseConclusion is either an OrderedCollection of CDCOGConstraintElements or it's a CDCOGBusinessConstraint itself (as in rule = If something, then something, else another if-then rule). A ConstraintElement has a LHS which is a CDCOGBusinessConstraintEntity and a RHS which is either a CDCOGBusinessConstraintEntity (sort of circular again) or a CDCOGExpression - the BusinessConstraintEntity is the thing that contains the Catalog Unit in question. And conditionList in BusinessConstraint is an instance of CDCOGConditionList, which has a LHS which is a CDCOGCondition, and a RHS which is either a ConditionList or a Condition (very circular again). And all this only checks for one error condition possibility. Lots of other ones to check too. CDCOG stands for Critical Dates / Control Office Generator. And Kathy wants to know how I plan to handle read/write errors - when accessing DB or when accessing files as we are doing for now. I don't know. How the h. should I know. Just because you're paying for me 18,000 per month as a programmer - probably more than the average ANNUAL pay for a native of one of the best paid countries in the world - just because of that you expect me to have a good answer to a programming question about exception handling? Well, I don't know the answer. I'll look at it after I've implemented the gruesome details of the DSSError checking mechanism. I guess I'll do exception handling for the database errors - but from where - the domain or the GUI, I don't know. And how will I handle the exception - how will I tell the user what happened & what to do about it? how will I recover from it? That depends on the exception itself. I don't know.
I don't know. And YOU KNOW WHAT: I DON'T CARE!
I wonder if I'm cracking. Naaaah! Not me. I'm grounded in reality. I have a 600 foot cement foundation of truth under me.
Sounds like I've been reading Radical Honesty, don't it?
It's 4:30.
So, how much is enough? It's never enough till your heart stops beating (song). Walk away with 70,000 and your freedom right now. Or stay in jail for another year and you can walk away with 130,000. And while in jail try to have a good time. Try to sharpen your skills. Try to make a positive contribution. But, jail is still jail.
And I can sharpen my skills & make a positive contribution probably much easier OUTSIDE of jail.
I want to make sure that once I'm out I won't need to do time in jail again. I won't HAVE to work at Wendy's or pick cones or do temping. I'll do what I feel like doing only. What's the absolute minimum cost for that? Let's see: $500 per month can get you a flat with a roommate and food. No transportation. No entertainment that costs money. That's $6000 per year. And I can have fun by being a little creative. I can't buy plants, but I can get cuttings from other people, plant them in throw-away containers. Go to free cultural events. If I want to travel, I can volunteer for volunteer organizations. 70K will last me 12 years. 130K will last 22 years. If I stay in jail till 30 as originally planned, I can survive for 33 years.
12 years? Leave now. Survive till 40.
22 years? Leave next May. Survive till 51.
33 years? Leave 2 years from now. Survive till 63.
Then, there's the other part of the probability equation. I might pull in a bit of dough while retaining my freedom somehow. That would extend my freedom years.
What should I do? I'll go home and think about it.
Ritu
I wrote this for myself, but I'm hoping it means something to someone else too.
Does one need others to be happy?
I suppose I should be asking "do *I* need people and not trying to generalize. But the premise is: we all contain the same life force, and this life force requires certain nourishment in all instances. This is not to say that people can't have their differences. They can, but perhaps not about something as fundamental as the question being considered here. At any rate, if I could arrive at an answer for either the "I" question or the "one" question, I could proceed from there to try to generalize or specialize. Nonetheless I should be careful about which question I'm answering - it depends on which evidence I'm examining: my own past experience, or statistical data of others' experience.
I
want to relate to others
find myself unable to relate others.
Conversation in my head in overdrive these last couple of days. I'm on a
camping trip (Sat/Sun) alone. Would the conversation have been any better with
someone else? Would I have learnt something, would *they* have learnt something
from me?
Is it always about learning?
I think not.
It is about enjoying too - like I sometimes enjoy Peter.
But is it not because at those times he's behaving other than how I'd expect him
to behave, or how I'd behave myself (which may be the same thing?), and so I
learn something from him?
all unexpected behavior does NOT mean enjoyment
all times of learning are NOT times of enjoyment
There's something else to enjoyment
- think of an instance of enjoyment you've experienced with someone else.
I say something to Peter, and he sings to me in return. Or when he sings the
song about the ship that sank in Lake Superior or when he sings the Star
Spangled Banner. Why does this give me pleasure? (Bittersweet though the
pleasure is.)
It's because of 2 things combined (I think)
1) I'd never heard them before
2) They mean something to me - I find some meaning in them
These 2 things combined make for Peter (a "being") relating to me (a "being"),
and I think that is what enjoyment from someone else is about - 2 beings
relating to each other, and thus relating to the life force and enhancing it,
and the life force is something that wants to be enhanced - i.e. the being feels
fed when its life force is enhanced; without it, it eventually dies.
I can't get any deeper than that. 2 person beings relating (even though in the example, it was only one way) is a beautiful thing. Don't know why. But it is.
But is it *needed*? Could one/I be happy w/o it? I don't see why not. I *myself* find relating to any form of life fulfilling - plants, bugs, birds, myself. And one may find other non-life things fulfilling too - I can't imagine what though. I can't think of any non-life things that *I* enjoy - maybe experiences like racing down a hill on a bike, but that's again me relating to *my* life (my experience). There is no car or house or land or country that I lust after - except for what it offers me as a means of relating to life again.
It seems I can't even identify with the 3rd part that Blanton mentioned: mind, in-experience & out-experience - what's the out about? Notice a plane as if for the 1st time. But what can I notice except for the in-experience it percipitates?
I think I can be happy w/o people, *but* intensity of relating is stronger with people than with other life forms, therefore I should try to find people I can connect to.
All this seems to be based on belief (faith) in that underlying life force/being thing - but I can't point my finger at *it* and say this is what it is. It is a mystery to me. Maybe life will always be a mystery to a life-form? As you reach for it, try to touch it, it dissolves beneath your very hands (not to be cliche about it or anything)?
Isn't life about continuing life - surviving? That is no beautiful thing in itself. So, I've ended on a depressing note again.
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Topic of my next inquiring essay: Why do I find it so difficult to relate to people. New people make me nervous/self-conscious. Old people I don't seem to be able to get thru to out of inertia/habits or something.
Stay tuned :)