Shut the f--- up
One of the rules I made when I started this thing was that these posts would be unedited. I write it, I hit the button, it's there, and I leave it alone, damn the consequences.

I broke that rule just now. I wrote a long follow-up to the post below, explaining in excruciating detail exactly what it was about my job that inspires such vitriol. I read it, I shook my head and said, "Geez, RJ, you're a whiny bastard." Then, click, drag, delete. I censored myself.

I have a great wife, three fantastic kids, a very nice house and the bills are mostly paid on time. I have too much to be happy about to be wrapped up in whether my job sucks. That's indisputable.

It's also indisputable that my job is, for better or worse, a large part of my identity. Is that wrong and bad? Probably. But I have few outside interests, mostly for lack of time and money; I have no close friends within a 300-mile radius; and, in brutal honesty, I have this pathetic need to be good at something and have somebody notice. Up until recently, that particular pathetic need was fulfilled by my job. Now, not so much.

I've never hated my job, not in 16 years, 3 months and 1 week of gainful employment. That was one of the few things that separated me from everybody else in the world. Selfish as it sounds, I'd rather not join the masses in that regard.