My first complete week at work has just ended (the actual first weekback only consisted of two days so it doesn’t count). Other thanperformance reviews, it was a moderately busy week filled with theusual.

Reviews were due at the end of the week and I tried all week to get started on them. Despite my best attempts I could not motivate myself past the apathy. Only the pressing deadline spurred me into action. Why do I hate working on reviews? It’s a basis for why working on them is hard.

To be honest, I didn’t have a good year at work. Not by my standards. I am a self critical person. The thought of going through every single thing I did wrong just brought out the chill within me. To be fair, my feelings about where I’ve worked have gone from mostly positive to pretty negative. Last year, I almost hit rock bottom…. I actually don’t know….. I might even have touched bottom ever so briefly.

The vacation made me take a step back. Helped me to think and put things within a larger perspective.

I have another home to return to. I’ll miss people around here deeply but it’s not The End. It means I can quit my job. I understand that now. A sense of calmness has followed.

I need challenges in my life. It is a personal limitation. Without challenges, I’m lost. Work used to be a challenge but it rarely feels that way anymore. I was in the middle of nowhere. Stuck in purgatory. The Marathon and NaNoWriMo (heck even fantasy sports!) helped fill in those painful gaps. It was not enough because I was used, addicted even, to the challenges I had at work. That’s what all my resentment, all my anger was about. It’s why I constantly felt bored, unappreciated, neglected, overlooked. The fundamental problem is I used work as my centre. I need to shift that focus.

What happens now? What will change? Small things… Small things….

Back home lonesome Johnny
Prays for his baby’s parole
He waits on the hillside
Where the Wyomie waters roll
At his feet and almost grown now
A blue-eyed daughter and a handsome son
Well from small things, mama
Big things one day come
Well from small things, mama
Big things one day come
- From Small Things, Bruce Springsteen

[I started writing this last weekend but didn’t finished it. It now includes my feelings about the second week]