Couple days since I last updated. In a bit of a mental crisis, so I suppose here’s as good a place as any to sort my thoughts. Structure may be a bit weird, but whatever.

It’s hard to work for your father. Aside from the “son of the CEO” thing that will *always* undercut any achievement you make, or make you feel like a charity case, or make you feel like your contributions are only considered because of your father, there’s the issue that it’s really god damned hard to meet any sort of expectations he might have. There’s the issue that it’s simply impossible, when you feel like you’re failing at your job for whatever reason, not to feel like you’re not only letting your boss down, but your dad, as well. Particularly when one holds as high standards as mine does.

I feel, in this job, like pretty much, a complete failure. I’ve been working with a wire saw, trying to get a process down, for nearly two years. Two YEARS, and not a consistent set of cuts to be had. It’s insanity. And I feel like it’s my fault. Never mind that the saw is a piece of worthless trash, and that it’s had manufacturer-side problems that they’re only just discovering last week, and that I’ve done everything from here to next week to try to figure out what the matter’s been – the *fact* of the matter is that in two years, I’ve gotten maybe five reasonable looking cuts on this saw. Not good. Then, there’s the issue that the first year and a half of my job was spent building a crystal growth reactor. I have no (ZERO) experience building complex vacuum systems. Not only that, I had ZERO experience in semiconductor crystal growth at ALL. I’d never SEEN a crystal growth reactor prior to building one, and to this day, I’ve never actually operated one. Ever. I found out, a year after it was done, that there are usually *teams* of people that work on this sort of stuff. That *gasp* multiple people work on projects like this. That one person doesn’t usually do all the mechanics, controls, and software. So maybe that accounts for why the software was so haphazard, since it was the first thing I’d ever done in LabVIEW, the most complex piece of software I’ve ever had to write, and written for a process I’d never ever seen anything even *like* in action? Maybe. I should have done more research, I should have gone somewhere and observed others, I should have understood the process more thoroughly. But it’s hard to come up with that sort of stuff when you have zero experience, and also zero management, and no mentor, or anything even remotely similar.

So, yeah, it’s stressful. And now, I’m sitting here, not getting paid, because I’ve volunteered to be put on leave, but I’m still stressed, because I’m trying to hook up all the I/O systems for our new machine in my “spare” time, and the future’s so unclear that I have no idea whether two months from now, I’ll be working or broke. So there’s both the parental stress, the uncertainty stress, and the simple fact that I’ve never been really excited about this job. Every other job I’ve had since being in the working world, I’ve taken with gusto, and beaten to a bloody pulp. At Argyle, I never missed a deadline, and no project was ever late, incomplete, or unchecked. Everything I did was stellar. I beat every deadline I was ever given at Alesis, and I made things work in half the time I was given, with half the parts they thought it would require. At Sega, I stomped all over the project, and despite losing 80% of the team involved, we were only a month late, with only three people on the project, WHILE I was teaching a middle school class, and working in the evenings for what would become the company I work for now. I *LOVED* it, even thought it was absolute insanity.

Now? I’m essentially doing nothing. I’ve essentially done nothing for almost a year, and it’s driving me bonkers. I’m miserable about work, I can’t say with pride that I’ve done anything that I would describe as substantial in the last year and a half, and the career I’d like to advance hasn’t made a step forward in three years. And if my dad reads this, he’ll suggest that I should quit, or that I should be fired, in order to motivate me to go find something different. But that’s not what I want. I want to either tie things up and leave gracefully, at a time when the project I’m on has enough resources I know it’ll go on without me. When the company’s stable, and the investment of the last three years of my life will have *meant* something, and not turn to dust.

But when? When is that? What is that? Will I make the decision when I’m supposed to? I don’t know. If an opportunity comes along, and I have to take it, I take it, and the company tanks – or worse yet, takes off without me? What then? But if I do nothing, if I sit here on the status quo, am I happy? No. It’s been hard to come to that decision, and say it outright, but no, I’m not happy with the way things are now, and something substantial needs to change before I am. I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable being the son of the CEO – it just carries too much baggage, for my perception in the eyes of others, and in my own.

*sigh*

Still, we’ll see. At some point, I’ll have to raise the issue myself. ‘Till then, I suppose, the best I can do is consider it as thoroughly as possible, and make sure I’m proactive about it.

In other “news” – the downstairs is progressing, and now that I’ve found my digital camera (stuck under the car seat) I’ll be taking some photos & posting them on the house page. Picked up Paul Krugman’s and Molly Ivins’ new books, as well as a book on Atkins – figure it’s worth reading about, and I’ve got a couple people I know who have done well on it, with no ill effects. So, best to know what you’re looking at, before leaping into it, I suppose. Gonna try to cook more, as well – been getting slack about it, because it’s been so tiring recently. Now that I have time, though, I should take advantage of it. Been watching Jamie’s Kitchen, and if those 15 jokers can pull it off, I ought to be able to cook reasonably myself.

Almost finished with Jak & Daxter, and Freedom Fighters – probably less than two hours in each of ’em, and will likely finish them this week. Maybe play Shenmue II next, or pick up Crimson Skies to play on Live. Rainbow Six 3 comes out this next week too, I think, and I’ve got that preordered, so that’s a go regardless. Been playing Pictionary (tons of fun), reading a book called Jennifer Government (by Max Barry), and trying to exercise more regularly.

Yeah.

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