Oh So Boring…

This post gets the sometimes-often disclaimer of “whiny, long, etc.” So, proceed after the cut if you dare…

Really, don’t read further if you value, uh, not being bored out of your skull, I guess.

Okay. Anyone still here needs a cure for insomnia, and I aim to please! Frankly, I just wanted to write. Write about myself, I guess, because sometimes I feel the need to do that. To vent. About the good and the bad and the middling in my life.

First off, it’s been about a year since I started my new job with SAIC at NASA Goddard. Much like all things in life, it’s been a combination of good and bad. Now, if I went off the last few weeks, it’d probably seem quite bad. My guess is is that at higher levels, things are getting near end dates or something, because the pressure on Matt? It has been being applied.

Hmm. I’m not too sure about that last verb tense, but it’s the combination that seems to work in my head. But maybe I’ve just watched too much Futurama with time travel and all. But I digress…

I’ve been working my…rear end off the last few weeks. Some days, the pressure gets to me, I admit it. I don’t think I’ve felt this pressured, this driven to complete work since the bad days of grad school.  I work 10-, 12-hour days, slump on home, and then can barely function and remember what I’ve done until I hit the bed and wake up the next day. I know, I know. I’m not the only person ever who has long, hard days at work. But it’s just been a bit constant for a while now.

Plus, I often feel afraid that I’m not doing well enough at my job. That the successes I feel I’ve achieved don’t live up to what expectations the bosses have for me. I report what I think is a stellar result, and I sometimes get this “yeah, yeah, now what” feeling back. Of course, that sort of is the purpose of a boss. They expect results because I’m paid for results and results are expected by higher-ups of them.

I…I just hope I am doing well. I make mistakes. Made a doozie this week. Handed off some code I thought was good, but in the end turns out I was breaking the Fortran standard. Well, maybe not the standard, but I was assuming something that a conservative reading of the standard would not. One compiler allowed for the lazy thinking I was doing, but another didn’t. Weirdly, the latter compiler sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t. I imagine the optimizer sometimes managed to code around the bug or something.

Wow. I am boring.

I know, I know. Complain complain complain. But you know what? On the whole, though, my job isn’t bad. I like the co-workers I’ve gotten to know. I find my work interesting. I’m learning new things about a subject, meteorology and modeling it,  I know little about. And even the things I know a little about, I’m challenging myself every day. While that’s often frustrating, if I’m able to fix something, learn something…I like that.

Now for the more maudlin portion of our evening: Matt’s personal life! And, BONUS!, this section will probably be shorter that the above. Why? Because my personal life is, well, nigh-non-existent.

First and foremost, I’m alone. No, not alone, I guess. I’m lonely. I have friends, dear friends, on the internet, but it seems as if I’m destined to lose the ones I form here in DC, in real life. I find some, but they seem to drift away. Perhaps I’m too invested in the friendship and thus too “into” it. Or maybe not enough and they think I think they’re not worth my time. I don’t know.  I try and be a good friend, a good person. I can only be me. I still go to bed every night alone, wake up alone, go through the day alone. Gets to you, you know?

As for the more-than-friends part of life. Think, hmm, Washington Generals. I’ve had a few dates in the last few months and each was a disaster on a bad-Hollywood-sitcom level. One I got stood up. One, I’m pretty sure, just used me for the dinner. Another, I think she was visibly disgusted by me. Or something…I dunno.

I know those reactions are my fault. I’m not that attractive, I’m not all that fun and interesting. And, I suppose, I should just give up. But, well, they thought at least enough of me to want to meet in person. I guess I suppose at least virtually, I’m not a bad guy.

And I like me, ya know?  And I know from past experience that at least one woman seemed to like me too, maybe even love me. Sure, I managed to screw everything up with Jay somehow, yeah, but, you know what, for a while there, things were good and I guess that glimpse of something better, that feeling of belonging to something greater than me, of things being just right, it hooked me. I was genuinely happy in those days. I want that back again.

So I soldier on. I get insta-rejected on OKCupid now and then and now and then (a lot, okay?), rejected in real life. But I try, try again thinking someone out there might see more of me than the surface.

What’s that adage about insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Guess I’m a bit insane when it comes to relationships, eh?

Ah well, I suppose that’s enough rambling for now. Guess I had to get some stuff off of my mind.

Onward and upward. Tomorrow’s another day. And all that jazz.