This week’s work is a blur of fixing minor defects and implementing minor features. I am polishing and kneading code, sanding its sharp edges.

Work like this gets me thinking in a particular way. I’m looking for the fine details, and in my fixation on the edges and corners and borders of the world, I lose much of everything else. To adapt a phrase, I miss the tree for the leaves. I don’t know if there’s a way around it, nor am I sure if I should even desire to have it differently. There’s something comforting about being buried nose-first in the pages of life’s minutiae on occasion.

Admittedly, it’s not all great. There is a sense of despair that always accompanies this work, a despair which I think is a result of the narrow perspective. At times I feel like a young child, convinced that people really do disappear when you put your hands over their eyes. All of the good and bad things in my life fade into the periphery, and what’s in front of me is important. When I am engaged with my work, or something that cheers me, my heart sings as it rarely does. Conversely, things look very bleak indeed when I am confronted with the less pleasant pages of reality.

This mood is in direct opposition to my more holistic mode of work, where I lose the details, and see patterns form in everything. It’s creative euphoria, and there is danger also in that place.

I make the effort to step back into a more conventional head-space when I’m not working, and I feel that I do a good job of it, but I know that the specter of my work mindset remains. An occupational hazard, mayhap.