Yesterday (well, yesterday from the day I wrote this a bit over a week and a half ago because of holiday blog displacement and me trying to bank some writing before I’m hosting people), I spent two hours turning a hefty box full of various electrical components on and off. My calculations tell me that I did it approximately eight hundred times in those two hours, using a total of four different combinations of powering up and down steps. I was trying to get it to burn out since we’ve been getting reports of issues in the field with this particular box of electronics burning itself out when users are turning it on in the morning. While this did not make a lot of sense to us, given how hard we hit these things in the lab during the course of developing them and then testing them, we figured it was worth looking into. By which I mean the engineers and my manager figured it was worth looking into and the other testers figured it was worth me testing because, now that my urgent project is done, I don’t have anything that needs to be done yesterday while all the other testers are still working on that schedule.

I suspect that there was also a degree of revenge from my fellow testers here, given how completely I took over the lab when it was my turn to have the highest priority project on an immediate deadline, but I don’t mind this kind of work as much as most people. I don’t really get tired or lose focus when it comes to repetitive tasks. I can get bored, sure, but I can also just turn on some music or a podcast and just do the same thing over and over again for hours. I mean, I got paid to sit in a (hot, stuffy, uncomfortable) attic-equivalent location and flip a series of switches for two hours. It was an amazing break from the normally mentally-rigorous work I’ve been doing. It was everything I could have hoped for on a day when I was feeling particularly burned out and tired. Well, except for being in a hot, stuffy environment without a hair tie to get my hair away from my sweaty neck.

To amuse myself, I reached out to a discord server I’m in and begged for a diversion, offering to let people ask me anything they wanted while I power cycled this box for two hours. I expected maybe fifteen minutes of diversion, given my relatively low profile in the server and my complete lack of mystique, but one user jumped in and asked questions as quickly as I could answer them. Everything from the fairly basic “what’s your favorite color?” type questions to the more introspective “how do you feel about _____?” type questions. This user even threw a bunch of non-questions my way, including poetry lines and riffed off the answers I gave. We kept this up for the entire two hours I was flipping switches and kept the entire server (at least the users who have access to those channels, anyway) entertained while we did it. It was genuinely a lot of fun and really filled my current growing need for positive attention from people I at least sort of care about (a need growing from my, compared to this time last year, rather short list of friends I talk to regularly). I don’t remember a lot of it since my part of this back-and-forth was very stream-of-consciousness, but I really just enjoyed the banter between myself and the question-asker, the occasional commentary from those watching this happen, and the slow trickle of appreciative comments for a couple hours after it ended.

As much as I know it would be silly to do so, I kind of want to do that again. It felt really nice to have people paying attention to me in a positive and encouraging way. There are not many spaces where I feel comfortable enough to let my guard down and even fewer where I can feel comfortable with any kind of prolonged attention. This is one such space and I really want to immerse myself in it again. What this tells me, though, is that I need some kind of local community, or one of the now-disappearing third spaces, where I can go to spend my time around people who I appreciate and who appreciate me. It is lonely, sometimes, this cycle of trudging between my apartment, my workplace, the grocery store, and occasionally Target, and I really need to break it up with more spaces I enjoy occupying. All of which is easier said than done, of course, given my current work schedule, my lack of energy, and my continuing efforts to avoid catching Covid. I really don’t have much to spare these days, especially if I ever get enough energy to do something about the situation I’m in (in terms of my isolation, busy work schedule, and mixture of mental health issues). The reason this event was easy to do was because I could do it remotely, via my phone. I didn’t need to go anywhere and I was already going to be sitting in one spot with at least one of my hands free for five out of every six seconds for two continuous hours, so it cost me very little effort.

Its a tough spot to be in, sometimes, knowing pretty much exactly what it is I need and being forced to pick other things over it because I know I technically need them more. If I had more time to socialize, I’d be much more mentally healthy. Except that I’d also be living much closer to being broke every single week and that added stress would absolutely be worse than what I’ve got going on now. I can get my “attention from other humans” needs met multiple ways with varying degrees of effectiveness. Working fifty hours a week is the only effective way I’ve currently got for getting my basic survival needs met, especially now that my federal loans have payments due again and that my rent is two hundred bucks higher than it was last year. I don’t really have a choice, not in a way that really matters, since I’d just be trading the more tolerable misery for a less tolerable one. All I can really do is carry on, hope that I can get enough rests on my vacations, holidays, and weekends that I can eventually recover enough energy to finally do something about the situation I’m in. Until then, though, I just have to dig deep, knuckle onward, and find ways to enjoy myself along the way. Much like when I’m testing a large box of electronics that’s supposed to burn itself out when I turn it on and then doesn’t for two whole hours.