01/06/08 - 3:29 p.m.

I'm a little depressed. I figured writing here might help me figure out why.

There's a new page on the web that I put up which is getting some traffic, but not enough. Maybe that's it. I'm disappointed. And I'm not acknowledging my disappointment, so that kick-to-the-ego just lingers there, tauntingly. Fail! Fail!

Hypothetically, they say, you should feel the emotion so you can overcome it. I guess I should say "My story will not be popular. I'll have to do more work, writing another one, and hope it becomes popular instead."

This is complicated by the fact that I've been "reviewing" my unhappiness at my last job.

I tried so hard to hang onto that job. Was it "co-dependence"? What exactly do you feel now -- looking back, after the fact, at all the ways their disorganization doomed your prospects for any job success. Or maybe that's where the bad feelings come from -- by putting it all on them, you essentially say "I was just helpless the whole time." (Of course, that's what I did say a lot of the time.)

So which answer is more accurate?

I guess, honestly, I was excited about that job and moving closer to work - the excitement of trying something new. It seems like somewhere in that, though, I lost something. Besides the ordinary amount of control you always surrendered when you go in to a job, I surrendered more. I just trusted them to have work, and a position, and an organization. It just took me two years to figure out exactly what that was.

And, also, I didn't really want to do the type of work they were pushing me to. My immediate supervisor was no help there. Besides a lack of communication, they didn't really see it as their job to, say, address an unhappy worker. That was no one's job, really. We were all tossed into a pit together, and then stirred. Seriously. Their philosophy was "If there's a problem, let us know. And by the way, this used to work great when there were just four of us!"

But how unsatisfying is that? "Past management made errors!!" It's not particularly cathartic.

But I don't know what would be.

I guess I just need to delve in and admit that: it was disappointing. So instead of recognizing the things I didn't like, I should recognize all those good things that I'd been hoping for.

Or maybe I should just go for a walk. Get the hell out of here, and enjoy the freedom and isolation of that.