My day:
I wake up. If my son is with me that day, I get him clothes for the day, make breakfast, take meds, take him to school, come home, and login to work. The half hour before my first meeting is basically staring at a screen, wondering why I put myself through all the bullshit for $150k if it is as stressful as it gets. We accomplish nothing in the first meeting. I get reminded I have to approve stuff. Then meetings with project and product managers. I get 30-60 minutes to do anything useful. I take an hour lunch. I have more meetings. I get a call on how this or that is unsatisfactory in the development process, or the design, or architecture, nothing of which I have much say in. I spend up to two hours staring at a screen wondering what in all hell I can do to make things better for me or anyone. At the end of the day I have another meeting on random project bullshit or spend up to an hour doing something useful, like working with the designer on things we could theoretically add with ease, or do code reviews to make sure their AI-generated bullshit is at least readable and the tests pass.
I log off. Pick my kid up from school if he's with me that day. Make him dinner, play with him, get him to bed. On days without him I try one of my billion hobbies but fail to find joy and spend some time on video games. I go to bed. Since it's summer and the HOA demands lawn care I gotta do that once a week. Clean, take garbage to the curb once a week. Do a few loads of laundry that week. Order groceries delivered ecause I'm too fucking exhausted from doing so little that I can't drive there myself. Stress over finances, because even though I'm paid well, I have to pay alimony, rent, child support, whatever shit my ADHD brain determined was a good substitute for social interaction. Three more years, I tell myself. Three more years and the financial stuff will be way easier. Maybe I'll get a house if the housing bubble collapses. I look at the news to see what horrors occurred the regime today. I look outside. I see a hornet still trying to find a spot to nest, but it still can't figure something out. I wait until closer to sunset to go outside, I can't stand buzzy flying things. I take a breath of fresh air.
Pac-Mans words enter my mind:
There's strength in repetition. There's strength in repetition. There's strength in repetition.