everyday i come here, to this blog, it is my solemn intent to never talk about my job, but i have no choice other than to be honest with you,  and admit that this job is really getting to me and clouds over everything i do. this is not a good sign.

everyone tells me to give it 6 months, or a year,  2 years, a decade, until i am extinct. just give it a chance. but each day, i become increasingly withdrawn, alienated and powerless to push through being withdrawn and alienated. each day, i am shrinking. i imagine how my co-workers may see me as shy, reclusive, eccentric and it is almost as if I am making a concerted effort to present myself in just that way. a performer, getting swallowed up in a performance. withdrawing deeper and deeper into a shell with no inking of how to exit it.  almost entirely detached. it’s scary.

this would all be very manageable, contained within the workday, but it is spilling into  the non-work parts of my life, which is really inconvenient… my friendships …. my acquaintanceships, my art… there’s this sad lethargy. it’s hard for me to remember that i used to be a very driven person. what happened?

last night, playing music with my friends… suddenly i had no music sensibility. i could not find the melodies or the rhythms, i could not sing, i could not keep rhythm (which was once my forté). everything felt a bit off. my friends were playing simple rock, pop and folk songs, but i could not make sense of them. they may as well have been playing Stockhausen. Maybe they were playing Stockhausen.

maybe it was a good thing that i could not find patterns of rhythm and song. maybe i have acquired new ears. and can hear things in new ways. but i fear that deep within this shell, i have lost my voice.