Happy Fun Cog

The world today is built on tasks and ideas that cannot be captured or solved by individual pieces of software. Or if it can be captured/solved, people still have to accept that the software also does a thousand other things they don't understand or like. It's all a big goddamn mess and I feel like I'm nothing more than a janitor who pushes pieces of garbage around so that people will see a clean space amongst all the trash and think that something is fixed. But nothing is ever "fixed." Nothing is ever clean. There will always be problem and we, people in IT as well as people at the software companies, we just move the problems around so the customers can get this one thing at this one time. Everything else is pretty much up for grabs. The idea of spending the rest of my life doing this or something like this is revolting in a very deep and powerful way.

I realize that another thing that I don't like about my job is how, because my job involves collaboration and because I drive a lot of troubleshooting work, I'm always having to a) ask people for their help and b) be told what to do by other people and c) have to serve as the contact point for customers and therefore bear the brunt of their irritation. But it's b) that really bothers me; any time there's a collaborative effort going on, it seems like I'm the one who has to run around trying to do everything that people suggest. I feel intense resentment on a regular basis because I'm supposed to be an expert (my position is literally "Subject Matter Expert") but I'm not. I rely on the developers, both in-house and at the software companies, as well as our in-house server people or Blackberry people or whatever to actually know what's going on and how to fix it. The majority of problems that I "fix" are actually fixed by other people; I just coordinate it.

I feel like I'm trafficking in my own sense of helplessness by having to constantly rely on other people. And if those people are busy or not replying to me because the leave work early for the day or just suck at their job, I'm the one who has to hold their feet to the fire to get things done and I fucking hate doing that. I'm an introvert, yet somehow I ended up in a job where I'm the main point of contact for customers and the person who has to deal with their anxiety and frustration and need, need, need. And I'm also trying to coax answers out of people and act as a translator between the business and the REAL subject matter experts, people who often don't speak the same language. I feel like my brain is being torn into small chunks every day because I get pulled into so many different directions. And I feel like people are always grabbing at me and hassling me because I'm at a central junction of a lot of different threads that connect the people who have the answers with the people with the questions, and it makes me angry and resentful almost every day.