Recap Shmecap

If I were to try to explain all the things that have happened since my last real entry which are at least somewhat noteworthy, this would probably go on for pages and pages. So rather than rehash the past few months, we'll just pick up the story of our hero at the end of 2018's Daylight Saving Time. After all, I'm going to have a whole extra hour to spend on writing come a couple hours from now, so I might as well make good use of it, no?

Rewinding a bit back to September, I took a trip to Colorado to visit A&A and also to see Rise Against and AFI in concert at Red Rocks. A1 and I were hanging out in their apartment, and he was talking about their upcoming plans to relocate out of the US in the next few years, and he said something interesting, which was that as soon as he had really set the intention to do something about their living situation and start the ball rolling for a relocation to South America, including putting a deposit down on house construction, things started happening in Denver that he'd been wanting to do for years. The universe is funny like that.

I think it was the following week that I finally set a similar intention to get out of California; I set up the meeting with $BOSS+1 to discuss options for working remotely and started looking at apartments and house rentals and such. I had it firmly ensconced in my mind that come January 2019, I was not going to be living in this fucked up unreality called the Bay Area any longer, assuming that I could get the powers that be at $DAYJOB to go along with it. It looked like everything was going to line up, too - someone else at the $DAYJOB had recently made the transition to working remotely, and all of the factors which contributed to him being allowed to do it were factors that would have applied in my situation, too - e.g., decent tenure at the company, specialized skill set that is difficult to hire for, and the like. I didn't get immediate approval from $BOSS+1, but I came out of the meeting feeling rather optimistic, and short of being entirely shut down by upper management, I didn't think there was anything which would keep me in CA any longer - certainly not by choice.

Oh, Blackbird, how wrong you are sometimes.

As it turns out, there is one thing that would keep me here by choice, and it happened just a few days later. I met someone. We've gone out 8 times now.

The universe is a harsh mistress, though, for the galaxy giveth, and the galaxy taketh away. I'm reminded of Fullmetal Alchemist, where the principle of equivalence states that when something is gained, something else of equal worth must be lost. On one hand, I met someone that makes my intuition sing; whether or not it actually comes to pass, I believe that there is the potential here for something wonderful. On the other hand, I have a cat-shaped crater in my soul right now, because I buried one of my best friends last week. Don't get your panties in a bunch, kids; I can't put a value on the loss of Shiznit any more than I can put a value on the possibility of building a relationship with 3M - but it does just strike me as peculiar that I'm dealing with a kind of heartbreak and sorrow that penetrates all the way to my core while simultaneously trying to keep the shadows away so that I can nurture the embers of a budding relationship that I have more hope for than I have had hope for in a long time.

But wait, there's more. My job is turning into a shit show. Not that it didn't have its problems before, but lately those problems seem to be intensifying. My former manager left back in August, which meant that all of us who were reporting to him are now reporting to the person who was his manager - at least until they find a replacement. This current manager is a solid engineer and a good "project manager" - i.e., he seems to be pretty decent at coordinating teams and getting things done - but he has zero people skills, and in every conversation I've had with him I get the sense that any attempted expressions of empathy are forced and not genuine. This isn't meant to be an insult; I just don't think the guy knows how to relate to people. I'm not sure if I'm the only one that feels this way - and normally it wouldn't really matter anyway - I just go to work, do my job, and mind my business, and I don't need to be friends with my boss. Except now we have a situation.

Before he left, my previous boss hired someone for my team over my objections; the guy had some good coding and operating systems skills, but his database knowledge wasn't up to par, so I voted no when he was interviewing. I thought he could have potentially been a fit for some other group, but I didn't want him on my team. They hired him anyway, and it has been a serious challenge working with this dude. He seems to have very unrealistic expectations of how information is going to be given to him, and he has a tendency to just ask me questions when he could have just looked up the answer on his own. We've had friction on some code reviews over what are really stupid items - and I had been planning to talk to him after his vacation about this shit. In my last 1-1 with my boss, he said that the preferred outcome was for the two of us to work out our issues on our own - and that would have been my preferred outcome, too - but apparently the other dude wanted to have our manager facilitate the conversation, and before I even had a chance to have a 1-1 conversation with the other dude, it all got co-opted by our boss.

If the dude wants to have a third party facilitator, that's fine, but our manager is not the one who should be doing it, and I don't think he understands why he's not the right person for the job. I tried to be diplomatic about it, so I suggested a different manager or someone else outside our direct reporting chain, but that idea got shot down; the reason I was given was that our boss says that he's personally responsible for the situation and thus he's not going to delegate facilitating this conversation. I completely understand where he's coming from, but sometimes the way to get something done right is to NOT do it yourself, particularly when you're not sufficiently equipped to do it. I have my 1-1 on Monday a couple hours before the scheduled airing of grievances, and I have to figure out how I'm going to deal with all of this shit. I don't know if I can convince the boss that he's not the right man for this job; I also don't know if I even feel like fighting that battle. I'm fairly certain that I know what "other dude" is going to complain about; what he doesn't understand is that I'm not going to change my behavior to accommodate his desire for overwhelming specificity. I expect engineers on my team to be able to deal with ambiguity, and I expect them to show some initiative and look shit up before coming to me for help, especially when the documentation actually does explain how to do what is they want to do. Most of all, I expect them to not act like immature little fucks when people disagree with them or they don't get their way.

I have no idea how all of that is going to turn out. I think it's possible for other dude and I to work our shit out, but I think our boss is going to fuck it all up. The sooner they hire a replacement for my old boss, the better. I would absolutely consider a transfer to another team, but unfortunately I'm stuck right now - the team I would transfer to has no open headcount, and there is no one else at the company who is anywhere close to being a domain expert with the stuff I work on. Oh yeah, and the servers have been on fire lately. So on top of stupid coworker stress, there's actual job stress. When it rains, it fucking pours - except that I can't even remember the last time it rained here.

There's actually a lot more I want to say about all the bullshit in my life right now, because the reality is that I am barely holding it together, and I'm sick of hearing people spout platitudes about hanging in there. I would actually like to have the fucking breakdown and sit in my kitchen and cry for three days straight and kick over a bunch of rock piles and break shit, but I can't. Too much to do, too many responsibilities, no time for that. So the pressure cooker just continues on, and I find little bits of respite and release where possible, but the rate at which the bullshit pile grows is currently outpacing my ability to deal with it. In any event, this seems like it needs to be a separate entry.

Let's go back to a happy topic - this new person that I'm dating. As I said above, we've gone out 8 times now. I am just as excited about getting to know more about her as I was after our first date, and when I talk about her to other people and explain why I like her, I'm told that my face lights up in a way that it really never does. Hell, my hairstylist was even teasing me like we were all back in grade school, which was pretty funny. I can't help it - when I think about all of the qualities that I would want in a romantic partner, it seems like she has them all. She's smart. She's creative. She's funny. She likes food! (Remember where I live ... meeting someone who's not a vegan or a vegetarian or gluten-free or whatever is not easy.) We have had some great conversations about everything from the mythology of psychedelics to whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich. She is also as beautiful on the outside as she is on the inside.

Don't worry, dear reader, I haven't completely lost all my marbles. She's not perfect. She doesn't ski. :-P

There is also one thing that is very different about this relationship compared to any other one that I've been in (do I call this a relationship? Right now I would say that we are just dating, and there hasn't been any talk of relationship stuff, but it seems odd to say friendship and I don't have any other word to use here) and that's the speed at which it's evolving. It's moving much more slowly - on every level - than any other relationship that I've been in. We didn't even kiss for the first time until date 6.  It wasn't like a RAWR fireball; it had a different kind of magic in it, and I could still feel the sensation of her lips lingering on mine an hour later. That's something I don't think I've ever felt. We've not done anything further than kiss, though, but you know what? I don't care. If/when/how anything more happens, then it does.

That being said, there's not a lot of generic physical affection, like holding hands or cuddling or anything of that sort - actually, there hasn't been any of that - and this is one element that I'm struggling with a little, because I don't know how to interpret it, and I haven't had the opportunity to bring it up with her and ask. I have to say that it would probably make me stupid happy to just curl up with her on the couch and watch a movie. You know what I said earlier about the rate of bullshit growth being greater than the rate of bullshit processing? This is exactly the sort of thing that would help me preserve my sanity - but I obviously can't force it if we are not there yet.

So... yeah. I don't know what is going to happen here. (I have said this quite a few times in this post - the uncertainty is strong with this one.) Maybe it won't be anything in the end, but maybe it will be exactly what we both need. My intuition is not always right, but with her the difference is that I am not afraid of it being wrong. If it is, then it is. Am I being crazy here? Maybe. A long time ago, I said that I would never again make a major life decision about my living situation based entirely on someone else, because I did that once and it blew up on me in every way possible, but I have to know how this story ends, and I know that it definitely does not have a happy ending if I'm not here to write it. Besides, I can always move out of CA in 2020, and maybe she will even come along. It's a nice thought - and as we say here at Blackbirds Are Indestructible - anything is possible.  Keep repeating that until you believe it.