Utopia

Picture it.

A basement or sub level apartment, no windows.  Simple little kitchen with basic necessities, same for the bathroom.  One main room with a tv, game consoles, computer, and a large bean bag.  The only lighting is black lights and the warm glow of the television.  Time looses all meaning and life becomes an endless circle of eating, playing, sleeping etc.  Being alone I would often take on more simian properties including walking about on all fours in an almost ape like manner and pounding my fists about the floors while making low guttural noises.  Communication would revert to a series of grunts unless absolutely necessary.  Exposure to the sunlight would be my only enemy.

Sounds like heaven right?

Work

I've been rather apathetic recently and I have the overwhelming feeling that much of it is related to my work.  About 8 months or so ago I was placed at a client to do some work.  All positions have their quirks and so I chalked many of the issues up to this fact alone, but there always been this feeling I couldn't quite put into the words.  Don't misunderstand me, the client is actually very friendly and laid back.  So I kept asking myself, "What am I complaining about?"

Today after months of pondering in the back of my mind it suddenly occurred to me.  Do you remember Tetris? Tetris and other similar puzzle games would often have a "Continuous Mode".  In this mode the game simply goes on forever until 1 of 2 conditions are met.  You either lose or you stop playing.  The whole concept of entering into something with the only premise being to lose and the only benchmark being how long it took you to  do it seems... well stupid.  The feature even rears its ugly head in the occasional first person shooter, allowing the player to shoot creature after creature until eternity or death.  It sounds more like a description of pain rather than fun.

What does all this have to do with my project?  I can't win, it can't be beaten.  Level after level it just continues on and on without even a concept of an end and somehow I have the controller in my hand.  Even if I loose I just have to start playing again.  I had to pinch myself to make sure I hadn't slipped into a dream of my own private hell.  I don't care what my score is, or how quickly I was able to get in that last sub routine.  It's all without purpose, the ultimate exercise in futility.  And so I am apathetic, comfortably numb and insulated from the repetitive uselessness of it all.  I just wish it didn't bleed into the rest of my life.

Blogs can be very frustrating.  I have a lot to blog about but the reality is I can't.  There are too many people that I know that read my blog and know it is my blog.  So naturally anything concerning them is somewhat off limits.  At the same time those very people make up the majority of my life.  Catch 22 nothing to blog about.  Can't really blog about work, what if someone that I work with find a blog connected to me....  Just frustrating.