I wish my life could be more consistent. It's really frustrating how dramatically I swing from being lively, cheerful, driven and productive to the exact opposite, and eventually back. Actually, if I were a hypochondriac I would wonder how much these patterns of my life would fit a clinical diagnosis for "manic depression".
There are a few factors that have been contributing to the most recent shifts back and forth. First of all, I think I really burned myself out during that London trip. I was seriously pushing myself to the limits. After a 14 hour day in the office I would go to the hotel room and concentrate really hard on how to spend my last remaining hours of the day to be more productive. Weekends were spent reading technical docs or playing around with code experiments or getting the new "Eclipse" software to work.
Beyond standard Murray-style insanity there were two motivations for this manic work-obsession. First of all, I missed the days back in New York when I was working like a demon, accomplishing small miracles on a regular basis, getting promoted to positions that were making "late 90's dot-com era" money. The last two or three year slump has been really depressing, and I think I missed the good old days that I was just wanting to prove to might that I still knew how to work hard.
Second, I wanted to test the waters on my contract with respect to the bonus. Without going into details, I'm being paid a flat monthly rate that is adjusted by a performance-based bonus. I've always hated the idea of working for a "wage" as opposed to an hourly base because I think companies use it as a vehicle to get ever-increasingly hard work out of people without appropriate compensation. I like being paid hourly because I get compensated for the work I put in. This bonus was devised as a way to try and marry the two.
So this was my experiment: I would put in one month of my total super-obsessed "it don't get better than this" 80-hour week best effort, and I would would see the level of my bonus from that. That would give me a good feel for how hard I should justify working under the current payment arrangement. (For obvious reasons I'm not going to publish my observations in a public forum.)
Suffice to say I think after three weeks I burned myself out pretty damn hard. Couple that with the fact I got home just in time to do taxes, clean up my apartment, get my finances squared with Quicken, rebuild the dying web server, resurrect the Stonewall Young Dems website and get underway on its replacement. By the beginning of May I was totally burned.
Add to that the fact that my current living & work situation affords me almost zero human contact and that I've been averaging about two dates a year with no romance on the horizon, and throughout May I'd spiraled down into the deepest, bluest funk imaginable.
And that's why I haven't been blogging. I'm one of those people who doesn't broadcast that he's depressed because he doesn't want to concern those people close to him.
That also means that by this blog entry, I'm actually on the steep climb back out of the slump. I got some good work done for the London job this weekend. I've done a few social things recently, took an improv class last week (BOY will a single acting class/exercise put me back in good spirits quickly) took myself out to see a number of movies (standard Murray personal-treat) and started getting in about an hour a day of roller-blading. (Returning to an exercise program might account for 80% of my recovery.)
It looks like I'll be going back to London REAL SOON NOW, like two or three weeks from now. This time I'm going to work hard to keep things in moderation. And I'm going to fight to have better control of my diet and some exercise.
Let's see if I can avoid repeating past mistakes.
Enough for now. I want to go blade a bit before it gets too hot.
Posted by Murray Todd Williams at June 2, 2004 10:36 AM