Le Téléphone Reste Éteint, Citoyen

After a series of false starts, I've started to reinitialise my original plan with respect to work---I am no longer going to look at my work phone nor work laptop on hours outside of work.

It was something that I had done all the time in the past implicitly. Firstly, I did not have a work laptop for the larger of my two big engagements with my old organisation (I've always preferred working on desktops for both the power:cost ratio and the obviously easy segregation of work and non-work); and secondly, I have never used my cellphone for work purposes (because there was a physical work phone that was tied to me in the office). If there was a need to be contactable out of office hours for quasi-emergency reasons, I would reroute the office phone number to my own cellphone as needed, otherwise it was strictly left alone. Finally, much of the work was done among colleagues who were physically in the office almost all the time, which meant that there was no need for any sort of always-on-call nature of instant messaging.

All three conditions had been shattered from the first day at my new work place. I was issued a work laptop only (no desktop), had no office phone (had to supply my own cellphone for work uses, but thankfully due to an unintentional acceptance of upselling from a Singtel representative, I had an additional line leeching off my own personal number for use), and had to rely on a lot of instant messaging due to having colleagues spread around the globe (a situation further exacerbated by the recent pandemic of the COVID-2019).

I am not grousing that those conditions were shattered. I am grousing that those three conditions were all that kept me from turning into a complete workaholic. And for the first few months, that was exactly what had happened to me---I was working almost non-stop, responding obsessively to every instant message that came by, powering up my laptop to work on things over the weekends, responding to queries and replies after office hours due to some of my colleagues' very different operating hours (they just sleep very late and wake up not-early). True, there was never an official directive that a ``9-9-6'' or even ``24×7''/``24/7'' operation requirement was expected of me, but since there were no checks and balances otherwise, I felt compelled to keep working like that.

It affected me negatively. Sleep was nearly impossible---all the thoughts about work was always swirling in my mind. And I am a person that cannot operate without enough sleep---it physically hurts my brain, cognitive abilities, and general mood. It reminded me of the time when I was still idealistic and in pursuit of my PhD, right up to the point before I decided it was not the lifestyle for me---monomania was definitely required, and that only the hungry/desperate/suicidal would be allowed to ``pass''. I tried it and failed; I didn't have that one-tracked obsession that would allow me to do the same thing day in, day out, without driving myself (suici|homi|geno)-cidal. In a lame way of describing it, my life has too many interesting things for me to look into to just limit myself to only one thing. Sure I loved programming, I liked machine learning, data mining, information extraction and integration. But I also liked writing stories, reading/learning knowledge from different fields, playing/composing music, geocaching, cycling, practising jujutsu, you know, living life other than just doing work.

Maybe I'm soft. Maybe I'm useless. If I'm the latter, maybe the company will decide so and fire me---I am starting to convince myself that perhaps it is not my place to decide what my true worth is to a company other than to let the company decide for itself.

So I've decided to take a stand, with Chara metaphorically staring daggers at me and forcing me to realise just the kind of self-destruction route I've been on. The work phone and laptop stays off after office hours. They stay off during the weekend.

This is the first weekend I am doing this, and already, on a Sunday early afternoon, I am feeling all kinds of uneasiness and anxiety. Will what I am working on/with require desperately require the input from me that completely precludes positive progress had I not looked into it over the last 60+ hours by the time Monday nine o'clock arrives?

I don't know. I will only find out when I wake up on Monday morning and power up my phone. While it is not a good idea to work longer than my official end working hours, no one has said that I cannot start the day earlier to ensure alignment of my schedule with that of Chara's. In some ways, it is probably less damaging, only if I can figure out my sleep schedule properly. I think it is less of the hours and more of how long it takes to calm the mind down at the end of the day so that proper rest may be obtained. But this will forever be a work in progress until something more concrete is determined.

It is at times like this that I sometimes (not always!) wish that I were a more boring type of person, the kind that lives to work, not have hobbies, and not having to think so much about things. It is not often though, because I've lived this particular life for too long already---I like the myriad of hobbies I do. If I'm lucky, I'd get around 3.1 billion seconds to live, of which I've already used 1.1 billion seconds. There really isn't that much time left to live out a full life.

Things will always work out, eventually. That's what being alive is all about---we think, and we work our way around any and all problems. I should really learn to keep my mind open more, and not let the vagaries of localised temporary setbacks throw me off balance.

Nothing Seems Fun Any More

Clearly this is not written at the silly time that you are seeing for this post.

Have you ever had one of those days where you metaphorically look at yourself in the mirror, wonder why the hell you are doing all that you are doing, what it is all for, and then coming to a realisation that nothing that you do seems fun and that you just want to end it all because it felt like it was probably preferable to what can be nicely described as a meaningless life of ennui?

Yeah, it felt like one of those days today. Why? How the hell would I know?

Nothing seems fun any more. I wake up, I get dressed, I get my ass to work, I work, I take my lunch break time to read, I get back to work, I drink lots of coffee, I leave the office, I meet up with Chara, I go home, I read, I sleep; then rinse and repeat. On weekends, I wake up, I get dressed, I do something ``fun'' (read, watch the VODs for the latest speedrun marathon or from some of my favourite Youtubers, play dizi/flute/saxophone, write/transcribe music), I go for rehearsal, I go home, I sleep.

Maybe it's the lack of a pay-off. Lots of things done, but the pay-off always seem so far away. I was looking forward to going for the International Low Flutes Festival in Urayasu Japan with Chara this year, but thanks to the rise of the pre-pandemic levels of the COVID-2019 event, the event has been postponed till next year (a slightly fancier way of saying ``cancelled for this year but we will skip the crazy planning and re-use the original plans for next year''). We have since replaced it with something different and local, and I am looking forward to that, but I cannot deny a certain level of being bummed out.

I was supposed to meet up with some of my old colleagues/friends for an evening of beer and talking cock, but well, it's been ``postponed indefinitely`` also due to the COVID-2019 event.

I can go on and on, but why bother? I'm just going to make myself feel worse. In fact, I don't know why I am even writing this entry in the first place. Oh right, just as a means of documenting a transient period in life.

No, I'm in no danger of offing myself, at least not in a direct sort of way. I do feel this compulsion to just work so hard that I collapse or something though... I suspect this is just a side effect of just wanting to reach the state of drowning myself so hard that I don't need to think any more.

Thinking is just making me more and more depressed over time. The world is not a nice place.

Till the next update. Hopefully things are less stupid by then.