oh, and watch out for the crocodiles
when i was a kid i watched the neverending story exactly one time. i knew it by reputation, of course, for one scene in particular that kids and adults alike said had made them cry for weeks. i am referring, of course, to the swamp of sadness, and the beloved horse artax who sinks into the swamp and dies. this scene didn't really get to me as a kid, mostly because it felt like it didn't make sense - the swamp is introduced as a place that will take you if you let it, but if you don't let its magic overwhelm you emotionally, you're safe. survival is tautological, if you believe you will be okay in the end then you will; artax's death is, fundamentally, a failing of character and spiritual tenacity. I, i declared, was Built Different.
some time about 15 years later i left uni and started my first serious, 9-5, this-is-your-life-now job. suffice to say i fucking get it now.
i started working on a monday, the day after my 24th birthday. i quickly learned that despite using C++ for several years of uni work, i did not understand it to the degree that this company operated or expected me to operate. two weeks later, i permanently cancelled all of the tabletop games i was running because i was too tired. two months later, i was practically living for the weeknights when i got to hang out with my friends - but to be honest, i was there to hang out with a very small group of people, and everything else was somewhere between nice added details and unfortunate distractions. five months, and i found myself sitting in a crowd of my friends just waiting for everyone to leave so i could have a precious hour or so with the two people who i could truly breathe around.
ten months and i was fucking drowning, alternating between working from home and crying silently at my desk. i still had no clue what i was doing most of the time, crushed by shame and guilt at being so useless, clawing and scratching at the codebase in hopes of extracting anything that would let me make an inch of progress on a task without my team lead holding my hand. i took extended periods off work, burning through my personal leave, then my sick leave, then ending up a couple of weeks in debt. one friday i messaged one of the sysadmins, my one friend in the office; "i'm not going to be in next week, can you change the names on all of my accounts to emma and i'll deal with it when i get back"1. that one helped for a while. almost. i remember driving down port road one morning in april, wondering if the traffic would ever pick up enough speed that i could mount the kerb in the middle of the road and drive into a tree fast enough to not feel the impact. my partner was expecting me home, so that was never actually going to happen, but if i hadn't been living with her at the time i don't think i would have survived.
after a lifetime of working at that job, i finally broke down too far to keep going. my last day was the wednesday of week 51; if i had lasted one more week, it would have been a year and a day. as it was, i never even got to have the free day off that i was told they gave people on their birthday.
when i left i was a wreck for several months. the thing that finally managed to drag me out was, of all things, a six month desk at a coworking space for game developers, that i squandered for several weeks and then started using two days a week, then three, then four. i made friends with the people sitting around me, i dropped my solo project to try working with someone for a while, and... somehow, several years later, i am still working with that guy and our team has grown and we are actually so damn close to having made something cool. and we're being paid for it! for now, at least.
but i need to be realistic; the only way i could do any of that was because i was living with my partner, who was still working a job she hated for a lot of that period. i owe a lot of people very many things for helping me get to where i am, but i think maybe i owe her most of all.
and despite it being several years, i think i'm still recovering from my old job; i still haven't managed to rebuild my shattered work ethic2, which was not perfect in uni but it was a lot stronger, and the drive for learning that i used to cherish so dearly is going to take similar work. maybe-foolish efforts over the last few months have shown that i'm still not capable of maintaining a 9-5 schedule any more, and i still feel quite sick every time i drive north along port road. i am recovering, but i am still recovering, and at the same time i get to watch people i love getting dragged into the same awful machinery that crushed me. and there's nothing i can do to stop it.
everyone always says there's no better outcome. find something you can tolerate. the exhaustion never goes away. time to buckle down. there is nothing better than this.
please don't believe them. please don't let that into your heart. i am afraid of what will happen if you do.
the swamp sucks. its fucking awful. trust me, i know. there is solid ground out there if you keep going, i promise. i found some, we've built a tiny little island for a few people for a little while, and it might be sinking again now but we're looking for another one. the mud is heavy, and i am not enough of a fool to think that i am not going to end up trudging around in it again before too long. i think we're all going to end up quite covered in mud by the end of it. cry, scream, run, sit and rest a while, save your strength, do what you need to survive, but don't let the swamp inside you. don't let your head slip below the surface, as hopeless as it might seem. there is solid ground here, you will find it. i cannot for a moment imagine you not finding it, if you can last long enough to get there.
i did not in fact get away with this so easily, i did end up having to email the CEO before i left that day about it, but it was worth it, and i learned later that i apparently caused quite a frantic week for our HR team. which i regretted a little but it they were chill :)↩
when i lived with my parents i had my weekly tasks to help keep the house clean, and i did them, and i did the dishes and i put my clothes through the wash more than once a month, and i know none of my readers who have seen the state of my house will ever believe me↩