My good mood has expired.
Sometimes I feel a primal scream rising inside me. A high-pitched shriek of frustration and anguish which, in my current suburban surroundings, would probably cause at least three neighbors to call the police or rush over in panic. Then again, since I don’t know my neighbors, they might just ignore it. I always suppress this shriek, but one day I will find somewhere isolated enough that I can let it out, rage at the sky about the torture of existence, and, hopefully, come back feeling much more serene without it inside me.
My life isn’t so terrible. On the whole, many many people, perhaps even most people, have worse lives with more problems than I do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pitying myself in comparison to others. Oh, no. I am well aware that EVERYONE has good reason to be miserable.
This makes it worse.
You see, if I knew that somehow my own misery allowed others to live in peace and happiness, if I knew that my suffering lifted the burden from some other soul, at least I could feel that it had some purpose. As it is, I’m miserable, and so are you, and there’s nothing that can be done about it.
DAMMIT, I WANT TO KNOW THINGS.
I’m having a bit of a fit right now. Unemployment and the resulting spending of savings are bad, but worse is the feeling of mentropy that I mentioned two ramblings ago. When I got a job, I stopped pursuing knowledge, I stopped LEARNING things, I stopped doing all the things that DEFINED me! I’ve wasted so much time, and it makes me very angry. I was once ahead of the game, I was 18 and knew more about computers than almost anyone I knew. Now I’m behind the curve. I stood still and the world went rushing past. I’m 21 and that 18-year-old that I once was could code CIRCLES around me. Among non-geeks, I’m a guru. Among geeks, I’m mediocre at best. I hate that feeling. I grew up one of the best. Now I find myself a member of a culture made UP of the best, in which I am unremarkable and insignificant. I’m a little fish in a big pond. I’m not going to claim that it’s not fair. Those folks who are remarkable and significant are smarter than me or more determined than me, and deserve whatever accolades they receive. I am angry because I have not performed to the same level.
I’ve wasted some portion of my potential.
I am angry.
I’m so mediocre a geek, I haven’t been able to find a job doing the only thing I’m good at, working with computers. Perhaps this isn’t a fair evaluation, as this is a bad time to be an unemployed professional geek. There are thousands of us out there right now. Two years ago I put up a resume online. I had zero professional experience and didn’t know what I was looking for. I immediately received several messages, via email and telephone, from interested employers and recruiters. I eventually found a job, which I kept for a year and a half, until cutbacks claimed it. I once again posted my resume on the ‘net. This time I got nothing. Not. A. Damn. Thing. As I said, there are thousands of us out there. Unemployed geeks. The valley is crawling with us.
With my savings dwindling, I’m facing a difficult problem. If I can make money in computers, I’ll have a very lucrative hobby. If I can’t, I’ll have an extremely expensive technology addiction and no marketable skills. And I’m up against several thousand other recently-laid-off geeks, many of whom are more skilled than I am.
Damn it. Damn it all.