I used to think
If I could realize I'd die
Then I would be a lot nicer
Used to believe
In a lot more
Now I just see straight ahead.
That's not to say
I don't have good times
But as for my days
I spend them waiting.
-Rilo Kiley, "Science Vs. Romance"
Our application probably won't make the deadline.
My manager is sweating fucking bullets. His frenzied gait takes him from meeting to meeting, where his shaky hands smear the same notes over and over into increasingly less legible sense in Microsoft OneNote. He retains no information; his mind has become a bowl with no bottom in his panic, and in his effort to save as much as possible, he loses everything. He urges us, presses us, goads us to work extra: more hours after work on weekdays, logging on during the weekend. He leaves an hour later than usual, walking by all our desks and giving us long, pointed looks if we aren't sitting at our desks, dutifully prompting our LLMs. This project means everything to him. Despite running into every mistake head-on, turning a blind ear on every technical expert, and wasting everyone's time, it might come down to his own job (and ego) on the line, which is currently shuttered behind a thick plexiglass of delusion--the only thing protecting all that he holds dear in a tenuous shelter.
When we don't work over the weekend enough, he makes announcements. "Guys, I noticed only a handful of you working over the weekend..." "Be sure to work extra!"
When he's asked when the due date is, he puts his hand over his mouth and mumbles while avoiding eye contact. Guys, I noticed some of you want reassurance that you won't be in crunch time for the end of time, but you need to be prepared for that...
He gave me a high five today. We had a pizza party last week. Why hasn't morale increased? I explicitly asked for morale to increase.
My cat died last month. I held her in my arms while she passed. There's a hole in my heart, like a piece of me is gone. I raised her from a small jellybean that I found when I was in high school. Her eyes weren't even open yet. I would wake up an hour early to give her milk from a bottle, would have to make sure the temperature was alright by testing it on my arm. I would take the bus home and beeline straight to her. She was cute and perfect and innocent and I miss her so much, when I think about her I tear up.
I couldn't tell anyone. I felt like I did something wrong, like it was my fault. I went back to work and told no one. I chewed on my tongue over and over until it was a piece of gum holding my lips together.
Because we're in such a hurry, we made our morning meetings a full hour, so my manager can micromanage what everyone is doing and pretend he's keeping track of everything. Every morning meeting, he asks me what my ETA is on my work item. And every morning, I say, "The update I gave the first time is still valid." He says that if anything changes and if I finish my work item early, I need to let him know, which I think means he thinks usually when I finish an item, I just wait until my estimate is done and twiddle my thumbs.
A few weeks ago, I had a meeting with him. He told me I need to be more like two male peers of mine, not in any specific way, just be more like them. He looked at me and told me, placatingly, "I mean, I see potential in you." In the same meeting, I asked him how many work items were left and he said he didn't know.
I was reading Say It Well, which details a story I was too young to know at the time: in 2011, in Tucson, Arizona, there was a mass shooting that killed six and wounded thirteen. Among the dead was a 9 year old girl, Christina-Taylor Green. She had actually been born on 9/11, and was included in a book called Faces of Hope: Babies Born on 9/11. In it, the author wrote simple wishes that they hoped the children would experience, some almost mundane on inspection. On Christina's page, it said: "I hope you jump in rain puddles."
My body sits at my desk, but my head is somewhere else. I don't give one flying or grounded fuck about my manager's application. I don't care if it isn't delivered on time. In fact, maybe I don't want it to be delivered on-time. I close my eyes and think about the piece of my heart that's missing.
I think about that little girl, I wonder if she jumped in rain puddles (I pray she jumped in rain puddles). I wonder if I've jumped in rain puddles. It's something you don't think about as an adult. Something so simple, so childish, but it calls to me like those wild geese; those rain puddles call to me.
What a grace, what a privilege, to walk past those rain puddles to work on an application in my new 8-to-8. What an even greater privilege it is to jump in them, to feel the disgusting brown water of the parking lot climb up my pants, soak down into the sock, to squish around in my shoes for the rest of the day, shivering.
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