Saturday, October 10, 2009

Languishing

Languish:
–verb (used without object)
  1. to be or become weak or feeble; droop; fade.

  2. to lose vigor and vitality.

  3. to undergo neglect or experience prolonged inactivity; suffer hardship and distress: to languish in prison for ten years.

  4. to be subjected to delay or disregard; be ignored: a petition that languished on the warden's desk for a year.

  5. to pine with desire or longing.

  6. to assume an expression of tender, sentimental melancholy.
–noun
  1. the act or state of languishing.

  2. a tender, melancholy look or expression.

I languish. Very little-to-no progress in any real way. I have a good idea, though. I think I'd like to get into publishing, preferably fiction or graphic novels or comics. Try some sort of radical career shift and see what happens. After all, it can only get better from here, right?

Right?

Well, that might be the case assuming I did something about it. In the absence of real progress, work at my current job continues unabatedly. I have good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks. No one yells at me or says anything anymore. I think we may have reached some sort of compromise, an unspoken understanding that I'm a colossal fuckup and that I do good work when I do work and little that my bosses say can or will affect this state. I'm sure I'll wear down their patience at some point, but obviously not yet. As long as I don't screw up in some huge manner, and as long as I'm still good for the bottom line, which I currently am, my bosses are nonconfrontational enough that things will continue and I will be employed and paid.

I keep thinking "we'll see how long that lasts" but it's already lasted longer than I thought it would so who knows. As someone recently put it to me, perhaps things haven't yet reached that threshold where I force myself to act. Is complacency so bad? Am I really (that) unhappy in my current position?

I don't know. All I do know is that I continue to languish in this self-made purgatory. During the week I internally scream and fight against my daily work, while on the weekend I sit around directionless and immobile. I took a nap this afternoon for 3.5 hours. I watch television. I watch movies that I've seen half a dozen times already. My head runs in circles and I don't know what to do with myself. If that's not languishing, I don't know what is.

I know I'll break this cycle some day. I also know that I've said and written that before to little effect. Ah well, more another time.