I’m Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

I can’t seem to win lately. I just got out of a four day weekend – count it – four days, and I feel worse than ever. Saturday I had a blast with friends, but that is where the fun train made its last stop. I spent the entire day (8+ hours) studying and doing reading, quizzes, assignments, etc. I am only taking three classes, but the workload is more than I have ever experienced. I used to take 5 classes a semester, and work part time and managed to find plenty of time to get stuff done. (Ahh, those horrid FedEx days).

Now, things are a lot different. I have a full time job that stresses me out, and is becoming less enjoyable. I often find myself dragging into work in the mornings, and eager to leave at 5. My duties are shifting around once again, just as I began to advance a skill set past the now infamous “I dabbled with it” high water mark. It looks like channel development is once again at a prime, so I get to re-learn programming (again). Its not that I don’t like programming, its that I don’t like doing anything so seldomly that it is like starting over again by the time I get back to working on it. Ruby is my language of choice, as it requires the least effort on my part to create a polished website. Sure, there are performance, IDE, and documentation issues, but what language doesn’t have some skeletons in its closet? I tried to address some of these “inadequacies” by shopping around for the lastest and greatest since my last dabbling. I found that Ruby 1.9 is out, with horrid support for all the gems that I use. The database driver is unstable, the LDAP functionality is face down in the trenches, and the IDE I like costs money. Plus, its a pain to setup on Debian (compared to PHP). I really dislike PHP, and loathe going back, and I absolutely hate the C# language. Yes, I have my reasons, but lets stay on point – work is kicking my ass.

And that’s not the half of it. I am trying to finish my BAS degree online, so I have the option of getting the hell out of here, and out from under the TAP employee retention program. It seems that I lost HOPE scholarship a while back while trying to listen to a teacher that didn’t speak English, and ended up bombing a course. I should have just dropped it, but like a good Samaritan, I tried to stick with it. I got screwed for that. So now, I can take up to eight credit hours for free (as long as I remain a full-time employee) and pay for the oddly missing ninth hour out of pocket to continue my education. So for my three courses, I chose Statistics, Accounting, and Business Ethics. Of the three, statistics is the least of my problems (imagine that!). My accounting class is run like its a work camp for POWs. One grueling chapter, 3-5 quizzes, and a homework assignment that would make you cry EVERY FREAKING WEEK. This is just for the accounting class. The business ethics class has a long winded author, and a teacher that likes to use “big words” on his tests to confuse the laymen, such as myself. Questions typically start off with something like “Specifically, which of the following is not a cognitive barrier to ethics?” – Excuse me, what? Lets use the parlance of our times, sir. Save the collegiate speech for when you have your Harvard buddies, and you are all sipping on 30-year old Cognac.

I can’t seem to keep up with the house either. Things are a mess, and I am here long enough to sleep, eat, and study. Then its off to work, or one of the million other things I have to do, such as putting engine oil in my car before it bursts into flames. I don’t have time to vacuum, or dust either, which does wonders to my allergies. And cooking? Forget it. My nutrition is non-existent right now. Its probably one of the reasons that I feel so terrible EVERY DAY. It also doesn’t look like we will be getting out of this money pit rental anytime soon, as an opportunity that I was really excited about has fallen through. I tried not to get too excited, but with my stress level, and the promise that all of this would be taken away, who wouldn’t have have fallen for it? It was just too good to be true.

So here I sit, pissed off, tired, and no where to vent, except out into the Internets. This is total bullshit right now…