Hello Whoever You Are

Today it struck me pretty head-on just how deeply the damage goes from my last gig. I call it That Place That Must Not Be Named for a reason. It was fifteen years, some good times but overwhelmed by an astronomical amount of suffering. It left me reeling, and it changed me deeply and apparently in fundamental ways.

At work now, I don't make any social connections with my coworkers. They are presumably delightful people, but I think the past has burned out that part of me that wants to seek extra-professional connections. I tried a little bit with my S3, but I feel awkward, and inappropriate to have an extra-professional connection with someone I directly supervise.

So I was marveling at names I have no faces to match to working in my single-floor, mostly-hallways building. People I catch glances of and I have a 50/50 shot at figuring out who is who. I was laughing about this with one coworker who I ran into in our community/break room. Marveling that I could never know who some of these people are, never meeting them, never saying hello, while they slide from working with us to not working with us. Between the tickets of New User: <username> and Remove User: <username>.

My coworker had great advice. "If only you'd leave your cave..." and that really struck me. I recently smashed up my office, I used to work in a cramped middle-room with my S3, but then once the "machine room" was opened from the flotsam and jetsam of years of stuff clogging this room, I plucked a table and an acoustic wall panel from a pile of spare furniture. I moved myself into the machine room, into the corner. I face a filing cabinet which the desk I use meets and pins the acoustic panel between the filing cabinet and my desk to provide a weak acoustic block from my rack of networking and server equipment. My Bose QuietComfort headphones pick up the slack and with them on, it's very much a pleasant space.

It is also a cave. I spend about 98% of my day in this space. I have a task light, an Edison-type incandescent bulb in another task light, and a fluorescent under-cupboard light across the office, near the entrance. I leave the overhead fluorescents off, which provides me with a tiny island of light by where I work, darkness elsewhere. It's exactly what I want, I don't like exceedingly bright illumination, bright sunshine is terribly unpleasant, so the gloom is actually very much something I prefer.

My lighthearted humor at not knowing half these people met with a misunderstanding. But it got me thinking. What do I want from work? My last gig, and all that suffering changed me. Scared me. Terrified me. Unemployed because I was too... me. The fear of being homeless, of running out of twenty weeks of unemployment insurance, of trying to support the weight of the sky on a metaphorical broken back, really hit home. So now, I avoid any interaction at all that is one iota extra-professional. Silence is my shield, in a way, always on-hand to help, bringing my skills to benefit the cause of my employer, because that is what they are renting from me. But everything else has burned out of me. Honestly the fear is too much. To risk my employment by being the authentic version of who I really am is unthinkable to me. I am the IT Manager, nobody really knows much about me. I have family in New York and South Carolina and I have cats. That's pretty much it.

So I get to thinking about what that means and if I'm missing out on anything. I place everything on a balance. I've had relationships that were extra-professional at my last gig and when the "building burned down" there was only a scant handful of people who even gave a thought to me. Those relationships and what happened taught me much. Extra-professional relationships, friendships, are dross. They mean nothing, they feel substantial but are utterly ephemeral.

So, to revisit the statement, if only I would get out of my cave... and the answer is that the path I tread is the path for me. The safe path. The path where I do not have to fear for my livelihood. My job isn't on the line because I perform nothing that would endanger it. What is worth more, to know the names and faces of my coworkers or to have a job? I will eventually put faces and names together, over years perhaps, but I don't think there is anything worth the risk of me engaging extra-professionally.

I used to really care about all the amazingness I could bring to bear if only anyone was interested in it. But they aren't. So I don't. For Generation X, a job isn't your definition. It's the thing you have to do to power a life you really want elsewhere. Elsewhen. Else. My purpose only tangentially touches on my professional pursuits, there is far more to me, but I appear uncomplicated because it's overall easier to not explore the depths with people who wouldn't care to know.

When I turned 40, I felt a shift in my life. I no longer felt interested in other people's lives. The quote from The Watchmen sums it up, when Doctor Manhattan bemoans the tangle of other peoples lives, and that he doesn't really care to be caught up in it any longer. That phrase really hits it square. Do I get involved in the tangle of other people's lives, or do I exist in another way?

So I suppose I'm quite okay with how things at work are unfolding. It's a wonderful place and I'm very happy to work there. But I don't think I can have connections with people the way I used to. It's a little sad, but I can accept it.