Tonight I am a failure
I don’t fail. It’s a fact of my life that I’ve come to understand over the years and now expect. Except for tonight. Tonight I am a failure. Tonight I am dropping my after-work computer science course. Most people might not see that as a failure, but it goes in the loss column for me. What makes it the worst is that I don’t think I *need* to drop the course. I’m sure I could do the work and pass with flying colors. But I don’t want to. … And it’s that lack of ambition that’s bugging me right now. Four years ago I know I would have doubled down and stuck it out. No matter what I had to sacrifice (let’s be honest, it would be sleep), I would have done it without a moment’s hesitation.
Fast forward to tonight. What is different from now and the mythical 2012? I can only find one thing that makes sense: I don’t care. I think I used to have the ability to segment the crap from different parts of my life. Each area could have it’s own level of crap that I dealt with, but that’s where it stayed. If work was extra stressful, it didn’t impact what I did at home. If family drama was making me pull out hair, work didn’t suffer. The scenarios are endless. But that’s not happening now. The draining parts of my life are starting to add together. The stress is adding together. But the joy isn’t. When that equation is unbalanced, trying to force yourself to care is impossible. I don’t really know when or why this change happened. I didn’t even realize it until I started thinking about dropping this course.
I have until Friday to decide if dropping it is the right answer, but I can’t see how the current landscape gives me another option. I’m seeing nothing but the truckload of stress and zero benefits as a result.