<p>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 <em>this</em> now”, is that when the project is done, there is nothing left.</p>
<p>This is a problem with any task. This is a grander problem.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <strong>this</strong> now”, except saying that about some strange machine which is not yourself.</p>
<p>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.</p>
