It is becoming clear that my job wants to eat me, and spit out the spent, bruised corpse.
I work in abstracts. It is the equivalent of pushing shapes through holes, like a child's toy. The difference is that there are 200000 holes, and half a million shapes that change almost randomly. I have to push all the shapes through all the holes as quick as I can, otherwise my phone starts ringing. I'm fortunate that I have a lot of resources to refer to, and helpful, knowledgeable coworkers that help me through this process.
However, no amount of support will help me if I go and do something stupid because I wasn't paying attention. That is what happened this weekend. I have been working on this one piece for the last three days, breaking only to have some company over for a few hours Friday night, and running errands for a few hours yesterday. The other time I have been sitting here in front of my remote terminal, trying to taunt some data into going through the hole.
But it's not going to go through the hole, because I am a gigantic dumbass. I forgot this piece didn't fit earlier in the month. It fell off the table, and I didn't notice it until I saw it blow up in front of my face Friday afternoon. My general incompetence and willingness to make wild assumptions is a growing problem with my work, and my inability to make any chance to that situation is really frustrating me. I've got checklists and charts covering my desk, and yet things still manage to seep thorough the cracks. One of these days I will make a truly gigantic mistake, and that will be the end of that.
This situation does not sit well with me at all. I don't think that I will ever be exceptionally good at this job, nor will I ever come to a place within myself where the little, stupid mistakes manage to disappear. I take it as an overarching criticism of my life in general. There are so many other things in my life that I don't pay enough attention to. There are so many people in my life that I haven't talked to in ages, blurred over in the swift but seemingly pointless passage of time. I don't know why this is the way things are, and I feel powerless to make any kind of effective change. This of course leads to the lack of effective change.
I feel defective. I just don't want that defect to affect others like it is doing right now.