Having a gap year before university, I am working for a software company. That is, we are currently creating a program to control huge machines used in the printing industry.
I get up every morning, have breakfast, try to scare my tired cells to death with a cold shower, get on my train, destination: a grayscale monotony without colleagues to have fun with, with a buzzing device that controls my time of presence down to tenths of seconds, with a coffee vending machine that outputs a brown tasteless broth. There I sit in front of my screen for up to nine hours, where I am supposed to write code.
Isn't that great you say, you've dug computers ever since you were a little child, and now you finally earn money with your favourite pastime activity.
Wrong. My work mainly consists of bug-fixing code that looks like a GW-Basic kid had written it, typing endless repetitive rows of crap I simply don't care about, re-writing segments of static chaos based upon bad concepts. This is completely uncreative. I have a feeling of intellectual depravation. I am socially isolated.
Unfortunately, there's even more out of balance. I spend a lot of time thinking about the woman I love, who opened my eyes for a fantastic unknown realm of emotion inside myself, and who is on some kind of ego-trip right now, thus can't care much about anybody but herself.. It's not you, it's me, she says.
I am kinda unhappy.
It's a bland life, not to say it's painful, you see. And the thing is, I have lost the energy for all the fun stuff I used to do with my computer. Creating sound and graphics and coding amazing things for their own sake, and learning, developing, acquiring new skills. In the evening, I hardly feel like anything but smoking dope and going to sleep, maybe watching dull tv programs.
If I wanted to, I could be twice as productive at work. But I have no intention to do so. I don't seem to be what my boss would call a loyal employee. I'll be out here in some months time.. to join the army (every young man in my country is forced to obey that fucking pathetic load of paranoid outdated bureaucrats, excuse me for speaking so bluntly). That adds up to my period of general dissatisfaction and lament. In the meantime, I'm just very glad there's E2.. i love it! I can spend hours around here. It saves my day.