Whine whine whine

I'm trying to cut down on the mopey, "emo" posts here. I have multiple motivations for blogging, but the biggest one is to document my feelings and actions for the benefit of others in the same boat. Ranting repetitively about how I feel at work probably isn't that helpful to that end. (However, the second-biggest motivation for blogging is to use it as a coping mechanism, and repetitive rants are great for that purpose!)

Just thinking a lot about the need for stimulation.... rewarding myself for not surfing (too much), clapping my hands, imagining a marching band doing circles around my brain, whatever I have to do to survive.

One thing that would probably help, based on my career counselor's recommendation, is to take more (or in my case, clearer) breaks during the day. I goof off plenty during the day, but more important is to actually get up from the computer and walk around a bit.

A very lame entry

Need stimulation.... badly. Blue Valkyrie is about to die.

No joke -- sometimes during the day I just start clapping my hands because I feel the incredible need to do something. I'm sure my coworkers must wonder what that's about. A saner alternative that I've tried a couple of times is to bring in a few poker chips to stack and play with, but they became such a conversation piece that I stopped doing it. Maybe if I just used generic chips instead of real casino chips from my collection....

Actually, it's more interesting to sit here and ponder why the couple of coding tasks I could be doing don't get me more fired up. I mean, I have evidence galore that coding just isn't what I should be doing, so in some ways I'm gilding the lily here. If someone tells you Career X isn't ideal for you, and wouldn't you prefer Careers A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J?, it's sort of silly to invest more time thinking about why Career X isn't ideal.

But still, I like some things about coding, and self-knowledge is valuable, so I sit here pondering why I can't get started on these tasks. Blame the boss is way too easy, but I really think it's because I have no clear priorities set for my time. I know that I used to perceive one of these projects as really important; then it became clear that my perception was "misaligned," and so I stopped thinking about that one for a few weeks. The other one is just finishing up some work so we feel like we're getting our money's worth from a vendor, but frankly, it's a feature that won't have a dozen users by the end of its season in a couple of months. It's very hard to motivate myself to do either of these.

Nutrition or delicacy?

I started to entitle this "OK-ness", which would be ironic since the overuse of the suffix -ness is one of my millions of peeves. Then I wanted to entitle it "Hope," but I got off topic.

Yesterday I had a session with another counselor, not the career one, and I kept trying to present a balanced view between the fact that I'm incredibly frustrated during my workday but generally optimistic about the direction in which things will soon be headed. I actually was surprised that he kept summarizing the conversation in generally positive terms, because I don't think I sound very cheery when I'm on that topic. But I really do have to remind myself that as difficult as I find it from day-to-day, things really are headed toward getting better.

It's hard to recall that now, because I'm really struggling again today. It dawned on me that one reason it's really hard to explain excruciating boredom to normal people is because I really don't know if they have a category for it! Perhaps they see boredom as merely the absence of something interesting. So if you're bored, well, it's not as good as if something really wonderful is happening to you. Conversely, it's not as bad as something awful is happening to you. I mean, it's really neither bad nor good, just... boring. Right? I really don't know if other people see boredom that way.

This comparison may be a bit contrived, but it strikes me as somewhat akin to the difference between food -- any food -- and some particular delicacy, say, chocolate cake. I suppose that most people desire some sort of intellectual stimulation, much as they might desire chocolate cake. If they happen upon a piece of cake every week or two, great! If not, nothing really cataclysmic happens. They're missing out on something desirable, perhaps, but it's clearly a desire, not a need.

When I go without intellectual stimulation, I feel starved, desperate to rectify the situation. For me it's a need, not a desire.

I don't think other people can get that. When I imagine them saying to me, "Just suck it up! It's work. It's not supposed to be fun," I have the feeling they think they're talking about chocolate cake, not realizing that I'm dying of malnutrition.

But all is not lost....

Actually, last couple of days I had forgotten that I had a rush of things I wanted to learn more about in my spare moments here, possible career stuff. Things like, can you take an undergraduate course in organizational behavior? (Some places, like U of North Texas, you can. Now to find one in a location that appeals to me, and preferably in an extension school.)

It sucks that I don't get enough from Web development to keep me going emotionally, but you gotta make your own stimulation, I guess.

Understimulation

I'm feeling oh so very understimulated at the moment. Hard but instructive to try to put my finger on why. I mean, I do have work to do. Some of it really needs to get done, and some of it is like, OK, I'm rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, adding features to a site that no one ever sees that don't happen to be features any of the public cares about, but hey, it's what my boss wants.

I tried working on the stuff that really needed to get done earlier today, and that seemed to go OK (if a little distracted). But now I've moved toward allotting time for the stuff that is really unimportant, but my boss will probably ask for sooner than the other stuff. I just try to concentrate and my brain says, "I don't wanna."

I've more or less prayerfully decided to take some kind of "radical action" when the good project wraps up in March or April. That doesn't necessarily mean quitting; it could be a three-month sabbatical or changing my work so I can do it offsite. But I just can't keep at it with the same old routine for another 6 months or five years or whatever normal people do when they're trapped in a boring existence.

I've always thought that having a plan for making things better should be enough to calm me down. But I'm ADHD, so it doesn't work that way. Having a plan to make things better just gets me into this state where I'm frustrated because it's not yet time to carry out that plan, and that just makes the routine into drudgery.

Self-discipline

In abstract terms, I know that my life would supposedly be better if I'd stop surfing around the Internet looking for stuff to make me think during work hours. And indeed, I try to give myself rewards when I do settle down and focus, e.g. counting up the times I shut down unrelated Web sites and giving myself 20 cents per occurrence toward some book or something that I'd like to buy.

But the sad fact is, I don't get enough stimulation from software to keep me going. I get some stimulation, and that tends to create a mirage. If only I could work on cool projects, if only I could use the right technology, if only I could use agile methods, then I would be happy working in this job function. And over time, I've come to really question that. I think development is something that can be really cool in the short term, especially when it's done well, with unit tests and pair programming and such. Some ADHD people are good programmers, but their brain might not work exactly like mine. Maybe coding just isn't enough to keep me going.

What is?

Sooooo....

Now that I'm no longer emotionally "hung up" about the carpal tunnel issue -- although it hasn't exactly gone away yet, not physically -- I can turn my attention back to the real root problem. I don't find sitting and coding for 8 hours a day to be stimulating enough to hold my interest.

I'll have much more to say about this, but I'll just introduce this insight I've had recently. My brain is such that I simply must feed it with stimulation, to a far greater degree than is normal. I mean, "normal" people need a little variety in life, at least most of them do, right? But plainly normal people can usually stay in the same job for six months without hating it. I can't.

It's not just job-related, but that's where contemporary life makes coping the hardest. I can (and do, to some extent) change my hobbies every three months if I need to. I can't change my work, unless I contract, consult, or do something else more varied than normal; or conversely, unless I've thrown in the towel and decided to be a temp, barista, or hamburger-maker. (I.e., professional jobs have the expectation that one be a "stable" person.) Because I can't change my work, I can't change my geographical setting. And when I can't change either of those, I get really antsy.