My Ghost Is A Machine

As you might have noticed, there has been a paucity of posts here since last month. I got a new job, after months of hunting and suffering. It’s a good place, even if it does feed into my need to work far too much.

Over-work is not an altogether bad thing if one likes what one does. However, I’m working 12 and 13 hour days and am not getting enough sleep, enough to eat nor am I spending any time with my kid. Further, my ex is totally, unashamedly insane, to wit:

• 301.00 Paranoid Personality Disorder

According to the DSM-IV-TR, this disorder is characterized by a pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:

• Suspects, without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him or her
• Is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trustworthiness of friends or associates
• Is reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against him or her
• Reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanings in benign remarks or events
• Persistently bears grudges, i.e., is unforgiving of insults, injuries, or slights
• Perceives attacks on his or her character or reputation that are not apparent to others and is quick to react angrily or to counterattack
• Has recurrent suspicions, without justification, regarding fidelity of spouse or sexual partner.

Exclusionary conditions:

• Does not occur exclusively during the course of a mood disorder with psychotic features, schizophrenia, or another psychotic disorder.
• Is not due to the direct physiological effects of a general medical condition.

Thanks, again, Wikipedia.

So, it’s been fun. But I have been catching up on bills, getting ready to get the lawyer mobilized, actually thinking about Christmas, seeing my doctor in two weeks about “medication” (heh, heh, heh!) and movin’ on up.

But sitting here (at my new job), I can sense the living factory around me. The myriad machine noises and rhythms and in particular, one machine that sounds like a CD injection moulding press opening and cycling. And it makes me a little sad that my time as an industrialist has past. I miss feeling the pulse of my machines making product because I made it happen. I miss the hub-bub and insanity, the nearly-unhinged pendulum of business swinging back and forth, chopping out windfalls of profit and dearths of success in an alternating rhythm I had come to understand so well.

About this time, 23 years ago, my partner and I started with just under $100 grand in cash and built four companies from the ground up. Too bad I got scared. We would have made it, I think. Oh, well. I have the machine to remind me, to comfort me and to serve as a warning against risks taken, ignored and borne. “Do it,” it grumbles.