Guilt

Sometimes I feel guilty about the advantages I’ve enjoyed over the years. At work I find myself pretty consistently applied to things. There’s never a shortage of stuff for me to work on, ever, it seems. My coworkers complain pretty frequently about working help desk, or even help desk having no tickets for them to handle. I’m rarely ever left alone to just dick around for a day. Part of that probably comes from me pressuring my employers to pay me more every opportunity that I get. Whether job-hopping or other means, I’m always looking for more money. Typically, if someone’s paid amply, you keep that person engaged and going, hacking away at whatever stack. I guess that’s part of it.

I dunno. There are a lot of advantages I enjoy in life. There are also disadvantages, but they don’t really bother me too much.

I think I want some downtime, though. I want to just reflect and sit around and do nothing for a day or two. That would be a nice break from the churn and burn.

I’m tired, though. It’s a kind of tired that I can feel in my bones. The kind of tired you still feel when you wake up after eight hours of sleep. It’s an exhaustion that transcends emotion and logic. The sort of weariness that answers questions about quantum weirdness- The weariness absolutely came first. It is all encompassing. It is a raft of scaffolding onto which my personhood was nailed together. Rubber bands have limits to their elasticity. I feel as though my elasticity is completely gone. Now when I’m tested, I simply break every time. I don’t know the “whys” or “whats”. I know my father was acquainted with that feeling. I know I won’t react to it the same way that he did. My spite for him might be the single strongest burning fuel keeping me going. The selfishness of his actions have had sweeping impacts in my life and beyond. I can’t be him. I’m not, I’ve already outlived him by nearly a decade.

It makes me worry that my kids might know what this feels like. They might also know this exhaustion.