I can't write another line of code.
I came to this realization, while trying to pull a branch down with GIT this morning ...
I stared at my monitor, wondering "how did I get here". The company I was at, until this morning, was just another "fill in the blank" corporation - sure, they created software to enable loan and debt schemes, but none of the jobs I could get, being paid 90k/year for, now, are any less crony, miserable, bug ridden and barren of meaning.
The people there were fine, good, decent, and deluded. They all "lived North of 96th Street" - even if they didn't, they had/have that "safe zone" mentality. "The cops will keep the riffraff out", sure they will ... or, perhaps, they won't.
There was nothing wrong with this company, in the statistical sense - center of mass, predictable, bullshit.
But I can't do it any longer - I'm "tapped out", so I tapped out. I told my boss I was burnt out - true. I told him I didn't care any longer about writing code, anywhere - true. I told him he was a decent guy - also true.
What I didn't say, what I kept to myself: I simply don't believe in the "American Dream", if it ever existed. I had no reason for making any amount of money - unless it was enough money to break free of the "American Debt Trap". You need a lot more than what I make to reach that point.
My dad - he died broke.
He was a small time logger in WA state, made lots of money until he didn't. The 1980's were hard on him, and then, in 1993, he died of a rare blood disorder - the kind you don't generally get from logging, but you do GET if you'd suffered radiation poisoning at some point in your life. Not so much radiation from logging ...
My dad volunteered, at 17, to server in WW2 - at that age, you needed your parents signature to serve. My mom's friend researched his records, NAVAL enlistment history, after he died. She found out that he "might have been" an unknowing participant in Operation Crossroads, the testing of nuclear weapons at Bikini Atoll during 1946. His timeline of service matched up, he worked as a mechanic, in Guam, before he was let go from service. He told stories of "cleaning up equipment", of standing in sludge, for hours a day, during that time period. They would put jeeps and other equipment on flat-tops (aircraft carriers) during the testing of these atom bombs. It is possible, though not provable, that he stood in highly radioactive fallout, for hours a day, during 1946. His NAVAL records were "accidentally lost" during flooding at the Pentagon in the early 1970's - so I'll never know for sure ... except for the blood disorder that loggers don't generally get.
I mention this, because the "American Dream" was bullshit for my dad as well - he could never admit it, because the "narrative" was too strong, too comfortable, too important a bromide. He couldn't allow himself to believe that his own government would turn a member of the "Greatest Generation", a volunteer for the Pacific Theater, into an unknowing guinea pig ... he couldn't fathom it.
Myself? - I can believe it ...
There are photos of marines marching into a mushroom cloud, during above ground testing, in Nevada, during the 1950's. So the "truth" is out there - Americans were experimented on, with radiation, civilians and military alike, during the Cold War. For what? - to fight the communists? No ... it was what tyrannies do ... treat their citizens as useful idiots and human resources - nothing more, nothing less ...
So I don't give a shit about the "American Dream" - it is bullshit, a lie, a deception, a Ponzi scheme.
I have no idea what happens next - I joke about waiting for work, outside some Home Depot, to do the work that other Mexicans do ... why not? - not that I fucking care ...
At nearly 50 years of age, there is no payoff fixing some douchee corporation's code ... none, nothing.
I would simply be making money, to buy beer, to get drunk, to make more money.
(that's all the meaning in this for me)
(I'd rather be just another "Mexican")