I believe that I am no longer human. I, of course, retain my humanity; however, I feel as if I am no longer human today. Why is it that I feel this way? I do not know. Perhaps I am touched with melancholia today. Perhaps I do not have any time to do that which I feel inclined to do? Perhaps it is a combination of everything. All I can say for sure, today, is that I don't feel quite right.
I work in IT. I am either looking at a screen to earn my daily bread, or am moving said screen to a different desk to help others. I find my satisfaction comes from helping humans to use technology to do their jobs better. Yet lately, after coexisting with my ticket queue, it feels as if my purpose there is to fulfill tasks. To fix the computer when it breaks. To load files when they come in. To wait for the phone to ring. I mostly enjoy my job, except for when we are treated like robots sitting and waiting for tasks. 'Can you move this user remote by the end of the day tomorrow?' That's a pretty unreasonable ask, to me. Sure, I can do it, but how would you like it if I dropped a half-hour interruption on you with less than a day's notice? 'Tis my job to make your problems my problems, I suppose. But today I don't feel like that. Glad it's Saturday.
Even outside of work, a lot of what I do involves looking at a screen. I drive my Tesla, I see a screen (and the road, too). I go home, the TV is in the living room. I write stuff, it goes on the screen. I rest, I read something on the screen. That is most assuredly not true rest; perhaps I am unrested for these past few weeks. I know that I have to touch grass. It's difficult, though, to touch grass when you are surrounded by screens.
I spent a week in a Ukrainian Catholic monastery a few weeks ago. It was the first week in my adult life that I did not look at a screen for more than three minutes a day. I noticed that when I would go to sleep I would just fall asleep instead of sitting and thinking and reflecting. Perhaps it was the early morning Matins. Or perhaps there's something to be said about not looking at the screen. The irony of this being transmitted by a screen.
Lately I feel like all I do is check boxes and complete tasks. At work, the aforementioned ticket queue is merely a list of tasks. We have daily tasks, weekly tasks, monthly tasks to do; these tasks are written in instructions that are lists of tasks. Outside, I have tasks too. I have to do the laundry. I have to go grocery shopping. I have to cook. I have to exercise. I have to do X, Y, or Z. It's been a while since I've done something that I really want to do without being obligated to it (either out of necessity, such as the laundry, or out of agreement, like meeting friends somewhere). It's not to say that I don't enjoy the things I do; I do, as much as any other man. But I am weighed down by obligation. I could use a day off. Glad I can get one on Wednesday.
I suppose I was stressed when I wrote that previous paragraph. I'm not quite as stressed now. But I am feeling somewhat melancholic today. Perhaps it's my sleep.
Everyone seems to want a piece of my time. I wish I had more of it to give. But I am lamenting that I can only give so much of it. This was a source of my stress today. I don't think I have poor time management skills, but I need to do some reading.
I finally finished fixing my computer. I have been troubled with strange kernel panicks and bad luck on installing, well, anything on this hardware. Fedora was the source of my problem but the only one I could consistently install. If only I could decide between Debian and Fedora permanently. I used to be a Fedora stan but then I had a whole bunch of trouble with dnf and failing updates.
There are too many choices in life. Film vs digital photos, Fedora or Debian or OpenSUSE or Arch, vim or Emacs, gas or electirc, color or B&W, Gnome vs KDE vs MATE vs i3 vs Sway vs Hyprland vs Awesome... It's tiring. I'm tired. I'm tired.
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