In retrospect, the trouble really began when I yielded to one of my co-workers, who had just gotten married and needed to visit Germany with his new bride before her pregnancy got too far along. Which was fine, I didn’t begrudge him that in the least – but it meant that not only did I go on vacation, I found myself instead covering his job in addition to mine.
And that’s when the knee really started to give me trouble. It had always been a bit dicky, ever since my brother took the post-hole diggers and made a hole that he lured me across, stepping knee-deep and miraculously not breaking anything. But for whatever reason, it was worse than it had been before, probably from the wear and tear of dockwalloping for two years plus. I hadn’t had to do as much of it lately, but going back to it made things worse, and eventually I was referred to a doctor who recommended surgery to clean it up.
That was the point at which a smarter person would have gone to his boss and said “I need some kind of accommodation.” And had I any inkling of how things would turn out, that’s exactly what I would have done. But I didn’t feel like I could, because our group had trouble in the past with a lead who always said “I’ll come back this afternoon and help you out,” which meant that there would be no help and there might not be an afternoon. So I had to do my usual desk work and then come back and do my share of the forklift jockeying and box moving. And when I got done backfilling for my one colleague, I had to start backfilling for another one who was constantly being re-tasked to assorted secret squirrel projects – which left me doing three jobs, none of which was particularly technical. The dock work could have been done by anyone with a strong back, the scheduling could have been done by a well-crafted piece of javascript if we’d had more competent programmers working with us, and the third job was deadly dull but just as deadly serious, packing out the special kits for sales staff working special events, and it was all your fault if anything went wrong irrespective of how.
So I panicked. I was terrified that if I didn’t get back into the technical side of things, I would be doomed. I was a troubleshooter, I was a problem solver, and I wanted to be solving more impressive things than how to get an education rep to take ten iPods instead of forty for whatever podcasting demonstration they were going to put on in the Grange hall in Dubuque. And ultimately, that was the foolishness – the notion that I somehow had to stay technical, that I would be in trouble if I didn’t.
Had I stayed, there’s a chance I could have eventually moved into the sales-engineer side of education or government sales. I was known and liked by people in both areas (even if others in EDU hated my guts) and I was building professional connections – the lack of which remains my Achilles’ heel in an industry and a part of the world where your next job almost always comes from a call from a former co-worker. Had I stayed, I was in line for a raise that would have handed me the same salary I got in my next job as a government subcontractor – and with actual benefits, unlike the subcontract gig. Had I stayed, I could have worked through the incipient depression from a more fortified position, rather than off the back of what I rapidly realized was a catastrophic mistake.
2007 was also when I tried to leave the internet behind and embrace the real world. I signed up for RCIA, but it didn’t go anywhere, partly for want of anyone who would make a viable sponsor but largely because I didn’t feel I could convert to only 60% of a religion I wasn’t raised in. I signed up for a men’s a capella chorus, but as the youngest one there by twenty years, it didn’t really do anything for me socially and took four hours a night for rehearsals. I signed up for a Java programming class at the local community college, only to realize that I have absolutely no interest in programming. And in an attempt to get into the real world, I abandoned my LiveJournal presence in any meaningful way. Which didn’t work out that great, to be honest.
In short, 2007 was a slowly gathering existential crisis which climaxed with me in a cinder block office in December, working what were functionally two part time jobs without benefits, bereft of whatever psychic gain came from being associated with Apple or National Geographic, without any meaningful support structure that wasn’t a continent away or borrowed second-hand, and convinced that my entire past was crumbling into a black hole behind me as I desperately tried to stay one step ahead. It was enough, eventually, to drive me to medication and a fourth try at some sort of therapy. I’d like to say it worked, and I suppose by summer of 2009 I was sort of okay – but it wasn’t back to normal, it was a new normal, in a way that left me wary of new normals for good.
I eventually made the money back. I eventually got out of field support. But it’s another situation where better choices would have gotten me there sooner, and it’s a useful reminder: be the person you’re becoming rather than trying to cling to the one you were.