Tired in Rambling sane thoughts of the terminally me

Late nights, early mornings and constant harassment from the world can drive a man to madness. For me, it didn’t have far to drag.

Kind of exploded the other day. It all came out of the wash with my brother.

Dan and I are very different in the way we deal with our issues. Simply put, he externalises them and I internalise. His way is probably the healthier from an external view point but it causes problems.

I snapped with him. For good or bad. Called him a drama queen; accused him of making excuses not to bother changing and blaming it all on his memory and his clumsiness. Pretty much the largest argument we’ve ever had. I feel better for having it. Things needed to be said on both sides. Both sides were correct and true.

I do deal with problems in an inherently practical way. I focus on solution and resolution rather than the problem itself which, when dealing with a practical issue, is fine but it can lead to conflict when I’m forced to deal with peoples emotions. I don’t handle them well. I’ll be, and always have been, the first to admit that. I’m trying to be better.

Danny is the polar opposite. He’s vastly empathetic, has time for most everyone and is always there for them. He’s often a far better person than myself. However, he’ll also bitch and moan for two days because he dropped a cup and scream at a computer game because he can’t beat a jumping puzzle.

Over the last month we’ve both been under a lot of stress, both at work and with the process of moving. We were tidying the old flat and it was discovered that Dan had, whilst throwing out a hoover bag, thrown out the clip that holds them in place. This rendered the hoover unusable until a new one was procured which couldn’t be done on the same day. This provoked a rant on how things like this always happened to him and he pretty much dropped into a chair and declared he didn’t feel like tidying.

I don’t remember too much about the exact details of the argument that ensued because I pretty much snapped at that point. The combination of stress and exhaustion had taken me to a tipping point and my usual “calm” demeanour collapsed under the weight. I believe I told him to get out and let me do it because I couldn’t deal with him sitting there in a sulk.

It just all seemed so pointless to me. I simply texted a friend, asked if we could borrow their vacuum cleaner, and made a mental note to order a new holding clip. I couldn’t understand why this was yet another major thing.

Of course, from Dannys perspective this was yet another example of a gaping flaw in his genetic make-up that only he sees. He fails to handle this in the same way I do.

The argument took the best part of an hour to resolve and, like most arguments, when we got past the inherent emotions was easy to fix. He’s agreed that he’s become too negative and too focused on the problems rather than their solution and I’ve agreed that I disregard the emotional context in favour of the practical. Also that I don’t talk about my feelings enough. We’ve both committed to finding a solution.

I suppose it was a productive argument and I don’t feel bad that it happened but it has, once again, highlighted a major personality flaw that I have. I am far too busy trying to find an amicable and reasonable solution to realise that I’m getting fucked over until it’s too late. Not to say my brother was trying to fuck me over but we should have had this discussion six months ago when it would have been a normal and moderated debate rather than a psychotic shouting match.

This came into context the next day. We’d taken a break from cleaning to go have coffee at the new “Geek Retreat” in Newcastle. Whilst drinking I got a call from work who proceeded to ask me to cut my holiday short and go in on monday to train a new batch of CPU Tier 2 advisors.

I almost said yes. It took Dan reminding me that I’d nearly eviscerated him the previous day AND that we needed that time to get the flat squared away so we could get our deposit back to actually say no.

What the hell was I thinking? Why is it so important to me to solve this stuff. It doesn’t matter. As soon as I said no the company was all like “Fair enough, we’ll start the training on wednesday”. This raised two points

1) What the hell were they doing interrupting my paid vacation time for something that clearly could be rescheduled by two days?

2) What the hell was I doing letting them do that?

I work extremely hard. I’m (and this is shameless self-flattery) fucking good at my job. I don’t get paid nearly enough for the hard work I do and yet I’ll go running to help them to do more with no further reward than the knowledge that the reason they call on me is that I am fucking good at my job.

It’s a little embarrassing. I’ve got to turn it around. I think the problem is that this diligence is what got me here and I’m afraid to stop because without it what have I really got to offer? I market myself on being indispensable but no-one truly is and it’s obvious, at least to me, how easy I would be to replace. I take a smug pride in being the only person in the UK able to do my job but at the same time I have to acknowledge that’s because they only need one person in the UK to do my job. A basic knowledge of practical teaching methods and a good understanding of apple technology and I’d have serious competition. Fortunately no-one else seems to have clued into this.

So I keep trying to make myself indispensable. I keep agreeing to go to extremes to help out. The downside of marketing yourself as the guy everyone can call on for help is you keep being the guy everyone calls on for help.

I helped moved my ex-flatmate to his girlfriends house. He told me it’d be a car load. Close to four. I did it because I need to have him out to get everything sorted and because if I didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done. That’s me in a nutshell. “If I don’t do it, it won’t get done”.

Where is my support structure? Where’s my chance to pursue my dreams and change my life in a positive and fulfilling way? And, possibly the most important question, when will I finally learn to tell people to fuck off and ignore that desperate need to stroke my own ego be proving to myself that they need me?

Oh, how I wish I had the answer to these questions. Life is a journey of self discovery. How often I wish someone would give me the road map.

Rant over.

Ramblerambleramble.