It’s frequent over the last few years that between early November and mid-January I enter a kind of soul-numbing melancholy. I’d managed to avoid it last year with the new job, and I was doing so well this year, not really thinking too much about it, but I think it’s sneaking up on me. I can kind of feel its approach.
Interestingly, I think that it’s nothing to do with the holidays, which maybe it used to be. And it doesn’t have anything to do with my birthday, which I will once again not be celebrating on the actual day. I guess it’s that I’m bothered by work stuff more these days, which is shocking considering what an influence it was last year to staying out of the funk. Now it’s most of the cause. If I think about it too much, I just want to crawl into a hole somewhere.
It’s a weird mix of feeling underutilized while also feeling ineffectual; overburdened while simultaneously not doing much. For things that I’m supposed to be expert at I frequently feel like that expertise is being eschewed. Things that I’ve volunteered to learn more about - things I don’t already know much about - to help out in areas that we’re weak seem to be things that I’m already expected to know, and when I don’t, I feel worthless and like I’m not doing my job well.
I’m missing opportunities to work on things that might have a finite scope because I have other work that is consuming me - things I know I’m not great at, don’t like to do, and have no end that I can see. It might be nice to start, finish, and be praised for something to have some simple success. My schedule seems to not allow this, I guess. Or I just suck too much to actually be given tasks like that.
I keep wondering if I’m telling myself that I am good at this, but really I’m mediocre. Or worse than mediocre. I’m questioning a year’s worth of thinking that I’ve ever been good at this. Again.
I wonder if there’s anything else I can avoid screwing up. It’s not fun feeling like this and I hope it passes soon.
