A Bit of Twisted

I work too much. By that I don’t mean to say that I work 60hrs a week and have to come in one weekend a month; by that I mean that I come in at 6-7am, leave at 6-7pm and work a good portion of every weekend. I’ve had 2 days off in 3 years and have worked both days. For one of them, my mother – with whom I was going to spend the day off – sat next to me at my desk while I worked an 8hr shift.

There is no denying that my time is needed here, or that we are defiantly moving forward. There is no denying that I am appreciated or that I am relied upon. There is no denying that I do my best and sometimes that isn’t enough. There is also no denying that I am being beat to hell with this work schedule and my life is, for all intents and purposes, on hold. It is no coincidence that I’ve got 3 year old projects I haven’t touched, or that it has been 3 years since I put any real effort into anything but work.

I made a commitment to do whatever I could to get us to a certain goal here. I have been doing whatever I can, to be sure, but it never seems to be enough. I’ve got a dev team who have lives outside of work to deal with and the effect of that is more of my life spent in my hobbit hole typing cryptic syntax to be eaten by our angry servers.

I came in at 3am today. I did so because I told my boss I’d get something done before he came in. I worked on this something last night, but only after taking care of the stack of work I already had spilling over from the workday.

The fact of the matter, simply, is that I don’t think this is a sustainable position. I question daily the point of anything I am doing. My desires are second in every case and I often feel that it is an offense for me to even regard myself in the light of that which needs to be done at work, and that which I have not been able to complete.

There has to be another way.