It was all good until a week ago

- Jay-Z

I may be retiring in three weeks. Things went from idyllic to horrific through the nonjudicious pressure of a single power-hungry mid-level manager. There are now two unions involved, lawyers, and a predictable number of talented professionals lawyering up and gearing for war. Meanwhile my work days have gained three unpaid hours on average and my system has become untenable - accounting for packing, dressing, riding, showering, dressing again, working, dressing, riding and showering I am now looking at fourteen hour days. Meanwhile one of my roommates has given up on food that doesn't come in a brown bag and the other is collecting sniper rifles and falling asleep on the couch watching PragerU videos on Youtube.

I have never experienced a job going from "good" to "bad" and then becoming "good" again. They go from "good" to "bad" to "oh fuck get me out of here." It's also worth noting that I'm trying to make it through Clavell's Whirlwind, a largely factual account of Bristow Helicopters' attempts to extricate their personnel and property from the Iranian Revolution. And the book is chockablock with "we can get through this" "this too shall pass" "as soon as we hear from X everything will be fine" and "as soon as this settles down we can bring the women back" when no, in fact, the time to cut bait was when the Ayatollah landed.

It was revealed through candid conversations with a department head that my department has been shielded from years of bullshit and that whatever difficulty we're going through, it's a weak shadow of the churn that's wracking the rest of the organization. What I thought was standard boilerplate corporate CYA turns out, in fact, to be the craven and dim-witted opportunism of people who should know better but invariably don't.

This is an organization that has made over $100m a year for 20 years. It has made me personally well over a half million dollars.

My wife ran payroll last night. We're paying out $19k a month. Fortunately our business model is closer to "commission" than "salary" but it's still terrifying to consider that our burn rate is over a quarter million a year.