ptomblin's Journal: Sigh

If there's any readers out there, I'm afraid you're in for a self-indulgent angsty post, just like every other blog or journal out there. Sorry about that.

I'm depressed again. I've been feeling out of sorts and sad for weeks now. I don't think this is a full blown depression (oh, God, please don't let it be that again) this time. Just too many things weighing on me.

• I'm convinced that the George Bush is dragging the entire world into a hell hole, and he's doing it for only two reasons:
  1. He wants to make his rich friends even richer, and more scary,
  2. He thinks he's spreading his brand of Christianity to the Muslim nations
• I'm currently in a boring stage of the project at work.
• The project I'm on hasn't sold a single copy even though we're just about to release version 3.0.
• Thanks to outsourcing, I'm worried that I may never work in tech again, and I don't have any other saleable skills.
• I'm currently without my aviation medical, although I hope to have it back in a while.
• Too many things to do, too little time.
• My on-line community of friends is squabbling and breaking up.

But more important than all of those things put together, is that sometimes it feels like my wife and I are room mates rather than mates. We occupy the same house and the same bed, and sometimes we even talk to each other, but we're both occupied with our own lives and it seems like they don't intersect enough. We keep making plans to spend a weekend away from the computers and the kids and the thousands of interruptions and personal projects and just spend some time connecting with each other, but those plans keep getting cancelled or pushed back. I'm as lonely as I was as a bachelor sometimes. And I feel like it's mostly my fault.

I don't know what the problem is. I still love her, deeply and painfully. I still need her. I still feel loved. But much of the time, what time we have together is more of an annoyance than a blessed opportunity.

The weird thing is that I think part of the problem is the change in our routines. In the mornings, we used to both sit at our computers in the family room checking our email, but now I go to the family room but she sits in the kitchen with her new laptop. We didn't talk that much (I'm barely coherent first thing in the morning) but it was a contact that I miss. So this morning at great risk to my sore knees and hips I sat in the kitchen with my laptop as well. It's not much, but it's a start.

A bigger change in our routines is the evenings. I used to sit in the family room at my computer, while Vicki and the kids watched TV. But it annoyed me that I never got to watch the sort of shows that I wanted to watch, so I got a TiVo for the TV in the bedroom. The plus side is that I get to watch all the shows I want to watch, the downside is that I'm isolated from the family. It probably wouldn't hurt me to spend more time watching crap reality shows and the like instead of Babylon 5 and History Channel shows if it meant that I was out there with them.

I can't fix everything that's wrong with my life, but I can at least try and fix this. And I suppose that gives me some hope.