A Red Sun & A Blue Mood
There’s a fire burning along one of the nearby hillsides. I don’t know how for long that fire has been burning, but the effects are still very much visible. The smoke and ash circulating through the air has given the sun a reddish tint that it normally doesn’t have. This sun’s unusual red hue was more apparent in the early morning hours of today and yesterday. Being that there is minimal containment of said fire, there’s a good chance that the sun will not be returning to its standard yellow shade tomorrow. This also means that I’ll have to tolerate the same poor air quality that has been plaguing the immediate area and vicinity tomorrow and likely for much of the coming week. I don’t know what caused this fire, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Some 20,000 acres have burned. The sky has this cloudy and almost ominous look to it. Don’t even bother inhaling deeply. With all the ash in the air, there’s really no reason to even be outside. Besides, it’s still ridiculously hot outside. After all, we’re still very much still in the midst of summer.
Still, I try to move on.
For much of the past 10 days, I’ve been in the midst of what I could best describe as a mental malaise. I haven’t been very motivated to do anything, though physically, I find myself still going through the motions. I have mostly stopped caring about work.
I’m still getting up very early and I’m arriving at the office in time to start working at my typical 4:45am. I do what I have to do for work purposes and I want to say that I’m doing a decent job of hiding my discontent and general lack of interest. Sometimes, I don’t even care if people can see that I’m not happy. It took me a few days to put on my finger on the source of my discontent at work, well, one of those sources, anyway.
I have narrowed it down to one person, with that person being Ernie. He’s been that proverbial thorn in my side. He’s loud. He’s nosy. He engages in disruptive conversations with various co-workers near my cubicle. His voice carries, to where I have to wear some form of noise-canceling headphones, to drown him out. He overestimates his abilities to do the job, to where he thinks that he is God’s gift to our workplace. If you’re asking me, he is very mediocre at best. He is painfully bland. He is the personification of what “no frills, no thrills” would be if this phrase were a person. Sure, he can do the job. He just doesn’t do it particularly well and he’s definitely not as great as he thinks he is. Again, he’s just kind of there and his presence annoys the hell out of me. I wish he would be transferred to another unit, preferably in an entirely different office. People like him. I don’t get it and I definitely don’t see it. Still, he annoys the hell out of me and I wish he were gone.
The office, in general, sucks too. Changes are being implemented and seemingly no one has the balls to tell management that these changes suck. I’m not the type to bite my tongue, so you know I had to say something. I let management know from the get-go that I don’t care for any of these changes. My voicing of my opinion may not lead to anything, nor do I anticipate that I’ll be able to prevent any of these changes, but at least I know that I let them know how I felt and that I wasn’t going to take these changes lying down like 90% of my coworkers seemingly did. I’ve been there way too long to go with the flow, like I normally do, especially when I don’t agree with that flow or what’s currently floating in that dirty water. I don’t feel like getting into what those changes are, at least not in this entry. Suffice it to say that I’m not on board with these changes and none of them make any damn sense. Logically, none of this makes sense. I’ll be damned if I’m just going to sit back and let it all happen, at least not without telling management that it is all terrible.
So, work used to be my safe haven. As the days and weeks progress, it is becoming an unforeseen source of misery.
Carmen and I spoke last week, unexpectedly of course, as has become our current usual. She knew that I haven’t been entirely happy with the office environment, to where she was questioning the extent to which I might have wanted to make a move and join her at her office and she wanted to check in on me. I thought it was a sweet gesture and I was thankful for her efforts. She could hear it in my tone that I was still very unhappy with the way that things were happening in our office. She is also still very hopeful about the potential for me to join her. I didn’t tell her this, but I don’t know if I’m ready and willing to leave my current office. The one thing I would stand to lose would be all those overtime hours that I’ve grown so accustomed to working. This last pay period I was able to rack up 70+ hours of overtime. With Carmen, I’d be lucky to eclipse 20 in any two-week period. I don’t know if I want to take that kind of hit to my wallet. Still, it would bring us back to old times, almost recreating what we had for 11 years. Change is hard and I don’t know if this is a change that I want to make, at least, not right now.
Serena was on vacation last week. She’s supposed to return to the office tomorrow. In her absence, I got into a groove where I relearned how to do the job by myself and I clearly reverted to my introverted ways. It felt good actually, being able to do whatever I wanted and having the freedom to “just go” on a whim. She made some changes to our work dynamic, to where it doesn’t look like we’re going to be spending much time at work together like we had been accustomed. This is one of those situations that I choose not to dwell on too much, being that I have no control over any of it. It’s been my finding that there’s no point in devoting any emotion or thought to situations that are out of my control. It’s as they say in the bland and pointless world, “It is what it is”. We’ll see what the rest of the week brings, but I’m not optimistic about any of it.
Work is work. Of late, it has sucked. With how bad I’ve considered work to have gotten, I have returned to the world of gaming. I hadn’t been playing much for the past few months. This is because I’ve been especially busy with the work thing. Yes, gaming has becoming increasingly woke and this too may have killed some of my motivation to play anything new. Dustborn is absolute trash, by the way. Google or YouTube it. It is garbage and not work your time or money. Avoid it like herpes.
The Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 beta played very well. I was able to spend some time playing the beta this past weekend and I found it to be very playable and definitely a game that I could see myself playing into 2025. What I haven’t decided is if I’m going to take the day off when it officially releases. In years past, I used to take the day off whenever the latest Call of Duty would release. I haven’t done that in years. I’m still on the fence as to whether I’ll do it this year.
I’ve still been meaning to play Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin. I own both games and have installed each one. One day, I’ll get around to playing at least one of them.
I don’t know what the week has in store. I am of the mindset that the rest of the week is going to suck. This is how I’ve been feeling the last two weeks. I don’t know if it gets any better, but it is my hope that at the very least, it doesn’t get any worse.
I am not optimistic.