Ennui

What happened to my passion, my fire, my drive?  I'm trying to figure it out.  Maybe if I type it "out loud" something will come to me.

I have this depressing tendency.  I start off everything with gusto and enthusiasm. I love getting into new things.  I'm a talented guy with a Midas touch, so I am greeted with success and that drives me forward.  I'll exude confidence and passion. Then after a while I'll get used to whatever it is that I'm doing, and take it for granted.  I'll get tired of the repetition and predictability.  My focus starts to weaken.  I'll start looking elsewhere for a new thrill, a new challenge.  My commitment to what I've begun starts to weaken.  I'll get lazy and sloppy and do the absolute minimum I have to do to keep whatever it is afloat.  Finally, I'll get so frustrated at my own failure that I'll give up.

I watched an old episode of Kitchen Nightmares starring Gordon Ramsay.  This episode was about Paul Bazzini, head chef and owner of the restaurant Bazzini in New Jersey.  Paul formerly worked alongside some of the star chefs in Manhattan, where he earned his reputation.  But he had lost his fire in the kitchen: the food was lame, service was slow, and there was low morale and discord throughout the restaurant.  Of course, Ramsay tried to straighten him out since he's the superhero of the show.  Ramsay helped Paul get his fire back by reintroducing him to his love for fresh pasta.  There were other setbacks they had to deal with, but the process of being re-energized is what brought back that success and drive.  And as I watched the restaurant drama unfold, I saw myself in Paul Bazzini, a former heavyweight who was now crawling, hopeless, confused, overwhelmed and miserable.

I saw myself dwindling in my education.  I started fired up as an eager 17-year old, a fresh face at MIT, ready to take on the world of chemistry.  I got my first job at a research lab, then went to graduate school. My fire whittled down by the people who criticized me, my research project eluded me yet never seemed to end. I almost quit graduate school altogether, except that I got a new job as a postdoctoral researcher in a new place with a new boss.  But overall my passion for chemistry was sinking.  I saw the depressed job market, the fun and interest were gone, most of the research articles I read became entirely too predictable, and I was no longer pushing at the boundaries of science. I also had to go back and finish my PhD thesis in the middle of it all, an embarrassing moment for everyone involved, myself especially. Beaten down, I finally settled for a laboratory job that involved almost no actual chemistry at all, working for a brilliant sociopathic menace to society. I felt like I was being set up like a bowling pin waiting to be knocked out of the game. To cope with my pathetic situation I would take solace in my hobby at the time, writing shareware. Software development was new and fun and promising. I finally quit my job and started a brand new career, leaving behind 15 years of study.

It's the same story with my marriage.  We started out with total passion and wild abandon. Our relationship was full of surprises and excitement.  We both entered Pentecostal Christianity, on fire for God together, and it soon became the central focus of our lives. We got involved in the Patriot movement together, and learned to shoot assault weapons together. Then came parenthood, the excitement of having children of our own to raise. Then there was a house to buy. Then there were bills to pay. After a few more years, the prospect of running a family felt more like treadmill. I spent less and less time with my wife and kids and I always was looking for excuses to escape. The Internet provided plenty of opportunity for this, and on Saturdays when I should have been tending to the family, I'd make excuses to be at work. Meanwhile, the house was falling apart as I fiddled. I tried to bring that passion back to my Christianity by studying the Bible more thoroughly, only to discover all of its inconsistencies, falsehoods and brutality. My faith in shreds, I taught adult Sunday school and decided to avoid reading any of the Bible to cling to what little faith remained in me. Deep inside, I was slowly quitting the family. I had little interaction with the outside world, and no real close friends. I discovered IMVU, a virtual chat world where people spoke freely under the cloak of anonymity. People started pointing out the failings in my relationship. Continuing my relationship with my wife became a chore. After 21 years together, from our first date to the fateful day, our marriage ended, not with a scream, but with a whimper, in a Yahoo! IM chat with my wife while I was out of town on business. I'm mostly to blame for the demise of our marriage.

I only really have one or two friends that go way back. I've slowly lost my enthusiasm for writing and playing music over the years. I've even lost some passion for my skepticism, hearing the same rebuttals to the same arguments (moral, cosmological, teleological, etc.) over and over. I'm turning into the jaded old guy that nobody likes anymore.

But here is the worst of it. I've lost a lot of my passion for my chosen career, and that could bankrupt me. It's the same story as Paul Bazzini above. Back in 1995, with our first child on the way, I was a coding machine at age 33. I was proud of my art, and every chance I got I would learn about new technologies and new methodologies. I turned our smaller bedroom into my "laboratory". I quickly moved up to webmaster, then business owner. I was being flown all over the country to work on projects. I had an unquenchable fire while the software development world was growing in power and gaining speed. But then came the distractions. And I've been working for the same company off and on for the past 13 years. I've been laid off (or fired) and rehired several times. In lean times, I'd get fired back up by working on another contract for a year or so, learn new techniques, meet new people, and see how others did software development. Some were great and some were disastrous. But now I'm failing hard. There are some days when I go into work and don't write a single line of code, engaged in an entire day of pure distraction. I'm too embarrassing to admit to anyone there how badly I'm failing. I've become an expert at hiding my internal failure from others, making excuses or even outright lies. The only excitement I seem to get is when I'm under deadline pressure and I have to pull off a magic trick, reverting into furious code machine mode for a brief period of time, swooping in to save the day with my talent.

Why am I like this? How can I keep my tenacity? Why do I always end up such a disappointment to those around me? Why am I so horrible at following through? Why is my blog like the most depressing diary ever?

I've got to start believing in myself. I have to have the self-discipline to make things happen, not just the new and engaging things, but the things I've poured out so much time and money and energy into. It's almost like I don't put any value in things, and I'm just a bubble floating on the river of life, waiting for the day when I just pop unnoticed.

Distractions

I've never been able to keep up a blog.  I've tried unsuccessfully for over a decade.  This is despite the ease with which I can write, my command of the English language, and the availability of free time that seems to find me all the time.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  Even if I find that topic engaging, I always find other things to distract me.  I just don't follow through.

I've tried writing about software.  I tried a blog about healthy eating.  Even another one about atheism.  No matter what I tried, I would stay interested in blogging for about a week or two, but then I'd go back to whatever it was that distracted me.  Today those distractions include: Zynga poker, Facebook, IMVU, YouTube (political, news, vaping and atheism vlogs and music videos), fetish pornography and secular blogs.  I also allow myself to get distracted thinking about my faraway girlfriend, but she has been very kind in staying out of my way when I should be doing something.

These distractions don't just distract me from blogging, but they are eating away at my life.  I'm 51 years old, and I don't have many useful years left.  Yet I feel compelled to squander the hours away seeking entertainment and fulfillment in these distracting activities.  It's almost to the point where I'm turning into that crotchety old guy everyone hates, who says "I'm too old to give a damn, I'll do what I do".  It may be the logical conclusion to a mid-life crisis that's spun way out of control.  I can't afford fancy luxury items due to my oppressive child support obligations, so I give the world the finger by wasting time on inane distractions.

The root of my distractions is greed and selfishness.  I could be doing things which help the poor, enrich other people's lives, invent new techniques, help other programmers.  Hell, I could be spending more time with my children. My addiction to these distractions has gotten so out of control that it is negatively impacting my work.  I can't remember the last time my 8-hour workday included eight hours of work.  There are sometimes when my distractions even distract me from the love of my life, my long-distance fiancee.

I'm very good at deceiving myself that these distractions are harmless diversions.  It's a matter of degree, though.  Taken by themselves, an occasional poker game or peek at porn isn't going to ruin my life.  And that's the excuse I use to sneak in a tiny little distraction.  Even as I write this, I think about how it would be great to play another round, browse for something great to fap to, or listen to someone else's take on the news.  A little bit can't hurt, I tell myself.  The lie sets in when I forget to go back to the more important thing I was supposed to be doing.  Hours later, on some page in Wikipedia, nothing of consequence has been accomplished.

Alcohol seems to exacerbate my addiction to distractions.  It lowers my threshold for giving a crap.  It allows me to totally forget about all the other good things I could be doing with my time and thoughts.  I can easily spend an entire day sipping whiskey and soda, and descending mindlessly into all the distractions the Internet has to offer, and realize sometime late in the day I hadn't even really eaten.  Or changed the cat box.  Or cleaned the kitchen.  Or written a note to someone who should matter to me more than my distractions.

I've even tried to fool myself into blocking my distractions by creating a hosts file that blocks the sites which tempt me into distraction.  This is about as effective as you would imagine, not very.  It's like setting up a parental control filter for porn web sites that I know the password to get around.  It may be temporarily helpful, but it's way too easy to subvert when my craving for distractions kicks in.

They say the first step in overcoming a problem is to identify the problem.  That's what I'm trying to do in this post.  Internet distractions are taking over my life.  My inner selfishness and hedonism fuel the constant craving.  This is a serious problem for me, and it might be an issue for you, too.  Welcome to the club.  It's time to do something about it.