I have no problem with working 80 hours a week.  Gotta pay your dues.  I understand that, and I'm glad to pay.

But 80 hours of work that will further my career is different from 80 hours of work for the sake of just keeping up with work.  For the last little while, I have been doing nothing but the latter.  Lack of progress = huge decline in motivation.

To the point where, at 1:36AM, I'm up, bleary-eyed, and really not looking forward to going to work tomorrow.  =(

To all you unemployed bastards, enjoy it while you can.

Ugh.  7/7/7 was difficult - quarter century hit home; no more fucking around.  It was a perfect number, and a perfect time in my life.  At my prime, good career, new car on the horizon.  It was so perfect, that I quickly found that any happiness I had was completely displaced by my fear of losing it.  Time felt very slippery, like something I'd never be able to hold on to, and I feared time so much that, for the past year, I've been losing sleep over it rather frequently.

I swore I'd never live for happiness.  Anything worth having required sacrifice, and so I would sacrifice everything in my present with the hope that I would reap the rewards in the future.  If I have kids, I want to give them a prosperous upbringing and be there for them.  I want my late 30's and early 40's to be spent doing the things I love doing, and they all require a substantial amount of wealth.  The subsequent hallowness I experienced was tough to bear.  Never seeing the light of day, dreaming about work, never having a moment just to breathe and relax.  I can say with absolute honesty that for the last 365 days, I have been stressed out of my mind, for every minute of every day, worrying about the unknown.

To be stressed even in your sleep is downright maddening.  I had never given serious thought about my psychological health until this started happening.  I've learned that you need sleep to allow your brain to process your sub-conscious thoughts; a bit like cleaning up your kitchen after you cook.  Being stressed right through your sleep prevents this from happening, and the mental "clutter" I've experienced has been exhausting, debilitating, and very counter-productive.

I've worked very hard to disown my humanity, to be nothing but pragmatic, to live my life completely objectively.  I've tried to make every breath a goal-oriented moment.  I've made my own personal feelings and emotions completely irrelevant to my decisions.  My short-term happiness would never be an issue, and I vowed to try not to live for the moment, but to live only for the future.  I have no social life, I don't go out to enjoy myself, and if I have energy, I work.  I think I've paid rather dearly for this, but I can't say that I've failed.  It has worked, but now that I'm looking at the cost, I have to say I'm wrestling with my emotions about them.

7/7/8 has been much tougher, and it's only been 2 hours.  Feeling very mopey.  I suppose if I had more to speak of for somebody my age I'd feel a little better.  I think.  I wonder, if the 3 things missing from my life, a Porsche, a house, and a senior-executive level job, were actually present, if I would feel any different.  Regardless, I hope this day goes by fast, and yet I hope it doesn't, because I know that if I blink a few more times that 27 will be right on my doorstep.  This year flew by, and it honestly felt like a few days.  I don't feel any different than I did last year, except a little bit wealthier, a lot more stressed, and a lot more tired.

Wrestling with my sense of mortality, the sense that my parents are getting older and looking a little more frail than they used to, the sense that life is short, more than ever.  I feel like 25 was something I wanted to just hang on to; loved ones are in good health, life is still fun, my shoulders still relatively unencumbered by heavy burdens, mortgages, etc.  Having lost a few friends in recent years, I'm really trying not to take life for granted.  The problem is, I've become very afraid of time.  Now I live fearing every day is my last, and I'm often depressed by the thought that, if I were to die today, I wouldn't be very proud of myself.

Wrestling with my decision to pursue my career, material success, and power before all else.  I made a conscious decision with sound reasoning, but I'm finding it a lot tougher to swallow today.  I've always felt that I have the rest of my life to enjoy friends and family, but only a few short years of youthful energy and exuberance to make my mark on the world.  But as my parents get older, I'm quickly realizing that the time we have to spend with the people we love the most is extremely limited.  Life feels shorter than I ever thought possible.  Even the mere fact that I feel conflicted about my decisions is bothering me - it's a sure sign of weakness, a by-product that I anticipated, but not in this magnitude.

I always swore I wouldn't be the type to live every day like it's my last; and I'm not, but now I spend every day wondering if I should.  But no matter.  When I wake up, I'm going to go to work, give it another 150%, and then come home and delete this post.

At 401/Leslie I pass a pretty big accident scene.  Nothing looks ridiculously damaged and I don't think anyone was maimed, but there are quite a few cars.  I later learned that a Lamborghini crashed there and sped off or something.  According to the news it sounded like the driver/passenger took off on foot, but there wasn't a Lambo at the crash scene; I would have taken pictures.

Then I got through the jam, buried the throttle and got onto the 404 North.  As I cleared the ramp I saw a massive plume of black smoke - clearly something serious was happening.  Turns out a cemetary at 404/Steeles caught fire.  I could see the dense smoke as I got off at 16th/404, and even as I turned into Markville Mall.

Ridiculous.