---
date: 2019-10-07
weight: 5
---

The problem of working with clients on a task with a specified end-goal, one that is finished and about which you can say, "ah, it does *this* now", is that when the project is done, there is nothing left.

> This is a problem with any task. This is a grander problem.

Yes, even with self-appointed tasks, even with tasks at a non job-shop. It happened just recently, too. I finished my time at IA. I got home from visiting Barac. I got the contract signed at NV.

If you hit a deadline and succeed, or if you have some work travel, or if you get home from a vacation, suddenly there's this empty bit of your future where there used to be this thing. There's just a void there. A sudden lack of weight.

> And so, back then, you finished the release at work and also finished the office move in one fell swoop, and went home.

I went home and took my meds like a good girl, and then proceeded to dissociate right through the evening.

Dissociation is a hell of a drug.

> It's a dreamy thing. It's a soft thing. It's a cottony thing. It's a muffled thing. It's watching your hands move. It's watching yourself breathe. It's feeling the air move in and out of you with a distant, slightly confused detachment. It's "ah, it does **this** now", except saying that about some strange machine which is not yourself.

I watched myself sit down in my chair. I watched myself turn on *Babylon 5*. I watched myself mow through two glasses of gin.

> You watched yourself with a metaphysical quirk of the eyebrow as you reached forward, grabbed the box of X-acto wood-carving tools --- purchased, doubtless, for some long forgotten project --- and flipped it open. You watched numbly as you slashed open the inside of your arm. There was a moment where you marveled at how long it took for the blood to well up, where you could see the white of subcutaneous fat.

And then the pain snapped me to.
