I hate my life.
Maybe.
Get up. Shower. Brush teeth. Dress for work.
It's the same thing, day after day.
When I step back from my first-world problems, I can see I've got it good. I have a roof over my head, entertainment, disposable income, food--and far too much if I'm being honest. I have a huge list of positives, including health, friends, and loving family.
Then I arrive at my job. The compromise that puts the roof over my head, food on the table, and affords me a mostly reliable car to get to said job. That's when I start to forget about my happy list of positives.
I know I shouldn't give in to the darkness, but one by one, the calls begin to steal my sanity.
“But, isn't wifi wireless?” she asks. I could look at the help ticket to find it, to better understand the problem, but I don't bother. This call isn't likely to last long.
“Yes, just like when you use a radio to listen to music. You still have to plug the radio in, don't you?” I try.
“I've had lots of radios I didn't have to plug in. You're not making any sense,” came the reply, “I want to speak to your supervisor!” she demands. I was betting I had a minute before the tantrum started. Her voice sounded on the younger side of sixty.
“Yes ma'am,” I say cheerfully and shunt her back into the call queue. The system immediately kicks me a new call. Here we go again.
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On my way home after work, I find myself thinking about the days when I gave it everything I had. I wanted to laugh at my enthusiastic younger self. Giving everything to any company was just masochistic. Now the only thing keeping me going was an instinctive rejection of doing shoddy work. That and what my wife called OCD, which I always refuted heartily.
I liked things done right, but I wasn't a perfectionist. I also only applied myself to needful things.
The damn procedural manuals were a perfect example. I took on the task of updating, revising, and expanding them back when I saw a need. Something my boss had praised me for after rubber-stamping my work. He stopped even reading them beyond a cursory glance after the first couple. I assumed at the time it was because he trusted me.
It was a lot of upfront work, but it made my coworkers' daily lives easier. Some of them appreciated it. Some had the nerve to whine about changes to the format. A big chunk of them just didn't care. That was the first time I had the sobering realization most of them had only pretended to read it during training and just went by the auto-prompts. The auto prompts which only covered the most basic of problems and were why we had the manual at all.
No matter how they felt about it at first though, they soon took all the changes for granted, as if they'd always been that way. The real kick in the teeth was now, somehow, everyone knows it's my ‘job’ and they assume I'll take care of it. I didn't get so much as a hollow title for it, just an increase in duties beyond the scope of my job description.
If I didn't like doing the manuals far more than my ‘real’ work, I'd have walked away long ago.
The manuals are a digitized web interface with a database back end. At least, they are now. When I started they were a chaotic array of papers in binders and folders scattered and tucked away in various locations within the building. Now, getting to play with them in their newly digitized form let me put my coding skills to work. A bit anyway. Since it isn't officially part of my job, I have to mostly work in ‘spare’ moments. To get those I have to squeeze out my quota of callers for the morning as quickly as I can. That usually leaves me with just enough time to make progress, but not enough time to do anything that would impress anyone who matters.
They don't care about things like efficiency, clean, well-documented code, a clear and friendly user interface, or other basic, but vital factors. If I was being honest, they didn't seem to care about anything but who you were friends with. Something I'd caught on about far too late.
I've been trying for years to get one of the positions in our development group. I jumped through the hoops, paid for a professional resume, and was told I needed a degree. I had one, even if it was an AS from the local community college. When I pointed out my degree was even in computer science, I was told it wasn't good enough.
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I accepted their answer.
To me, it made sense. The company wanted well-educated people manning its most critical systems. So I kept going, driving forward with my education. When I got my Bachelor's the company was suffering from the poor economy and was on a hiring freeze. When I started seeing new faces in the development group, I knew something was up. The company-wide freeze was real, but I knew exceptions were being made for critical areas. Thankfully, a secretary I shared the same lunch break with let me in on what was happening.
The department manager was angry over my work on the manuals. Apparently, only his people could do anything requiring HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. The fact I had dared meant he wouldn't hire me if I were the last available worker in the entire country.
I felt nauseous thinking about it. I was stuck. Trapped in a dead-end job at a company where a Bachelor's got you nothing if the guy with only a certificate running the department didn't like you. The cherry on top was when I also found out my boss got a bag of golf clubs and a country club dinner for all his ‘hard work’ on the project he had almost nothing to do with.
So where does that leave me? Stuck, in a dead-end job. One I couldn't afford to quit if I wanted to keep my problems on a first world basis.
My thoughts turn to home as it comes into view. It's a ranch-style single-story, sporting a bowling alley of a hallway connecting the bedrooms in back, with the living areas in front all walled off from each other.
I remember being not all that impressed when we first saw the place. It's definitely not the multi-story open floor plan we thought we were looking for. Tellina, on the other hand, saw the potential for it to be something special.
It took quite a while to get it closer to Tellina's vision and a lot of our own elbow grease on our days off. Our house had gradually transformed into a comfortable, friendly home. Thinking about that, I started to feel a little better. Work was still a nightmare, but my wife and I had replaced every bit of flooring, paint, and light socket until we felt comfortable. It was hard not to feel pride looking at it, especially since we did all the work ourselves, with not so much as a single outside contractor.
“Hi, sweetheart, I'm home!” I say as I put the garage door down and enter the house. Ginger, our little brown Boston Terrier, is wiggling and dancing as if I've been gone for months., Of course, I must squat down and pet and skritch and rub her all over.
“Welcome back,” she replies, “What's wrong?”
It must show on my face, I guess. “Just work again.”
“When are you going to tell them where to shove their ‘advancement opportunities’?”
“Only after I find somewhere else willing to take a chance and actually hire me,” I said. “You wouldn't want me to just be unemployed, would you?”
“Not a chance,” she tells me, “A bird in the hand and all that.”
“I am beginning to wonder,” I mutter.
“Are you going to fix the dryer tonight?” she asks.
I would rather mess with all the LEDs I have managed to scavenge, but dry clothes are admittedly a much higher priority. “I can't promise to fix it, but I'll see what I can do,” I answered.
“You know what I meant,” she said, irritation becoming apparent.
“Let me get changed and I'll get right on it,” I said.
The dryer has randomly stopped rotating again. I suspect I know what the problem is, and I don't know if I can fix it this time. It has this crazy mechanical switch that periodically reverses the rotation of the dryer. It is really quite clever. Unfortunately, it relies on a lever arm constantly pressing against a spinning wheel. The wheel has gone out-of-round and the lever arm has worn a lot of material off at the point of contact.
It's the kind of thing I would love to have a 3D printer to replace the part, but I doubt any normal plastic would last long. Love me as much as she does, Tellina probably wouldn't enjoy me setting up a metal foundry in the back yard to address that issue. She's of the opinion I'm a touch on the unlucky slash accident-prone side, so molten metals are right out.
I have patched where the lever meets the contacts inside the switch twice now, and I fear no more patching will be effective. Since the switch is unavailable anywhere except used on ebay, I am guessing we are probably looking at a full-motor replacement. A used switch or a used motor would just buy us some time, at best, so new is the only real way to go. If only money were no object…
Ahh, how I love this daydream. Palm trees and beaches, umbrella drinks and lounge chairs. And hammocks. Definitely hammocks.
As I change into working-around-the-house clothes and grab a few tools, my mind shifts to the task at hand. Once I am elbow-deep in the process, staying focused on the dryer doesn't last long. I've taken this thing apart often enough, it has become routine. My mind wants to indulge in one of my staple fantasies.
This time it's the one where I am accidentally thrown into a portal and find myself alone in the phlogiston. Weird that I'm drawn to the very beginning of the adventure, instead of toward the end. I see myself waking up on a spelljammer, pulled aboard in a state of suspended animation, unconscious for untold years or even centuries. I've kinda mapped out the progression of the next decades, growing in power as a mage and eventually finding my way home. It's the most isekai of my fantasies.
The one common thread in most of my daydreams is how I fix this house.
Whether I come back with magic, money, or technology, I turn this little home into something it couldn't realistically be otherwise. From simple things, like replacing the siding, to adding a huge, complex labyrinth of underground facilities underneath a basement which currently doesn't even exist, I always end up changing the place into something I would love to have.
Even though most of these scenarios end in me buying other, better properties in different locations, I still take the time and effort to upgrade this one first.
A remarkably fine line exists between love and hate, you know. It makes me wonder:
How do I feel about this place?
I hate this house.
Maybe.
Honestly, I love this home.