karniv0re's Journal: Miscellany Across the Spectrum

I don't have anything terribly specific to write about, but lots of little things.

Looking back nearly two years ago provides a pretty good picture of where I'm at. This tidbit from November of 2014 provides some insight:

After re-reading my last journal entry, man. This year has sucked. Shit was bleak.

That was from a journal entry titled Things Are Looking Up. But things never went up. I never got that architect position, and no more than a week later, the lady fell sick with Meniere's, which has been the centerpiece of our lives ever since.

Since then, it's been a war of attrition to see whether we can outlast our problems or if our problems outlast us.

I did end up going back to school, and I'm still in school. It's been a mixed bag of good and bad. I'm glad I'm learning things, and I'm glad I'm progressing toward a degree. I hate how much stress it causes me and how much time it eats up. I'm getting super out of shape because I don't have time to workout. I haven't been to the gym in probably about a year. I still run when I can, but it's not enough to counteract the booze and comfort food. I have cut back a bit on drinking. I don't keep bourbon around anymore. My regular mix of a couple beers and a couple manhattans from 2015 was slowly killing me. So I'm down to around 2-4 beers a night. Not great, but better.
I actually don't like being drunk anymore. I associate it with bad times now. So now, I prefer to be sober but still drink beers. It's a balance I guess. I expect that as I get older, and stress goes down (hopefully!), I'll drink even less.

But 2014 - 2018 (possibly even into 2019) maybe the most stressful years of my life. I feel like I can't relax until the Lady is done with school, boards passed, job acquired, and has been working for at least a year. In a way, I'm kind of glad 2016 is nearly over. I put this year on the calendar as a year to "get through." There were no incentives this year to speak of. None to look forward to.

I moved back over the the Glass Palace, giving up my awesome old cube and nice place in the company for a more anonymous role. Although it wasn't a great role there either. But at least I could focus on school. Now I've got a project due AND two classes. It's killing me. If I make it through this semester, I'm not sure what other challenges you could throw at me that would be tougher. I mean, I shouldn't say that. I thought I was being challenged a year ago with my Probability Models class. But Bayesian Stats + Data Science + work project + girlfriend with health issues is pretty much maxing me out.

Do I even need to mention how terrible the election has been? But I can't look away. It's such a fucking trainwreck. It also makes me question if I'm really a good person. I've done plenty I'm not proud of. Who really is good anyway? We're all sacks of waste waiting to die and fertilize the soil.

Maybe I'll list some good news. I did talk with my old boss and he's interested in bringing me on his team. He runs the Data Science team here. So that would be some great experience for me, and a definite change of pace. I'm going to talk with our AVP here pretty soon about that and my final school project. I want to work on ETAs. I think that'll be a great project. And next semester I'm taking a Time Series Analysis class, which will help in that analysis.

It looks like I will be out of debt by (revision number 920442) bonus time in 2018. So a little over a year to go. We'll see what pops up along the way. Kind of annoying that I'll be 35 just getting out of debt. Ridiculous, actually. But this is where we're at.

I have been toying with the idea of getting a PhD but I really don't know. Seems like an awful lot of effort for those letters. But I know it'd be huge for me. I'll probably continue to ponder it through 2017. Leaving it on the table.

But for now, I have a mobile app to build. I have roughly two weeks to put the finishing touches on the code. Time to earn my bonus.