Sometimes I can see when I’m pulling up roots, and sometimes it takes a storm for me to realise how shallow they’ve become.

Outside of work I’m doing a lot and I’m enjoying it. Advent of Code has started, and despite a strong day 1 and day 2 showing I’m struggling today. The musical I’m helping with has my name on it now as well, which is just mind-blowingly cool. We’re deep in the guts of it, trying to make the facts fit the Truth. It’s difficult, and there’s stuff that I think may not make the final cut. It’s also been a fascinating window into how other people work. I write, I would say, maybe three or four times as much as I need and then I boil down. Other people don’t write anything until they’re 95% happy with the content. And this means I have had zero hesitation scoring through a lot of my writing lead’s work, because in my mind it’s the extra stuff. And she has been hesitant to delete the pages (and I do mean pages!) of dialogue I’ve written in response to her request for three extra lines in a song, not realising that it’s all scaffolding. These are differences I didn’t even realise were differences, and getting to the bottom of them has been deeply rewarding.

She also has an internal monologue which is absolutely fucking wild to me. So:

Because the inside of my head is a quiet and empty place, friends. Sometimes I’ll visualise a thing, like a conversation or a scene or a person. But to have someone speak to me? Inside the privacy of my own head? No thank you.

This week I’m feeling a deeper connection with the people I love. I’m writing more – so much more! An old friend is back, and we’re rediscovering the ridiculous shared language we built from scratch. Basil, if you’re reading this: what a pleasure to have the old double-act back together.

I’m engaging myself in local politics (hyperlocal, like as-far-as-the-end-of-my-apartment-block). I’ve been budgeting for a decade now, and I can see I’m going to pay off my student loans within the next three years. That’s wild to me. It’s so exciting.

And this just serves as an even greater counterpoint to the feeling I have of disconnection from the work. I don’t know what it is. We’ve taken on a slew of new people, and I don’t do well with change. It is dark, a lot. I am in the office a lot more than I was (more change). I got a reward I didn’t think I deserved; I didn’t get a responsibility I thought I did. This is the longest I’ve worked on a platform, and the mistakes I keep walking into are mine. I think I want a change, but I’m not sure what. I think that’s manifested as seeking a promotion, but I’m less certain now that I want more of what I’m doing.

I want to get to the bottom of this. I don’t know how yet, but I want to, because retirement for me is further away than it has been for anyone in my family to date. At a conservative estimate I have at least 35 years more of this, and I want to figure out how to reconnect with the thing that I do for a living – or find something else with which I can connect.