When I'm Needed

Today was not a good day. Some errors in the automation around the security vulnerability scanner meant that it found a few vulnerabilities in containers we had. But rather than submitting the 5 vulnerabilities it found like it normally does, it opened one vulnerability for each instance of the container that was running in our 500+ namespaces. So, what should have been 5 vulnerabilities that I needed to do the paperwork on, turned into over 2,500.

Fixing the vulnerabilities wasn’t a big deal. New image built within 15 minutes, and kicked off the automation to roll it out through all our namespaces. The problem was it took over 2 hours to process the paperwork and close all the silly duplicate vulnerabilities.

It was a total waste of time, and doing pointless work like that contributes to the feelings of burnout I’ve been struggling with.

The problem is, my wife had a worse day.

I still don’t know all the details because she wouldn’t talk in front of the kids, but came home in tears, and just collapsed into a shell.

Suddenly all my problems disappeared. I went from “everything sucks I don’t have the energy to do anything but order a pizza” to jamming on a pair of headphones blasting some 80’s hair metal, cleaning the kitchen, and cooking dinner from scratch. I was proud of the meal I made, proud of the clean kitchen, and even got a small smile while rolling the eyes from my wife as she saw my attempts at dancing.

I was, dare I say it, in a good mood. All it took to get me out of my funk was for someone I care about to be in a worse mood. Definitely not a viable solution, but I need to take lessons from this on the perspective of things.

I’ve struggled with mental health and feelings of depression all my life. I can see it in my mother, my grandmother, and many of my aunts and uncles. I know the deck is stacked against me, and sometimes when I’m spiraling I can use the techniques from many years in therapy to help. Other times it is a far longer affair that is tougher to turn around.

Tonight was just like a light switch. Just bam! gone. And now that I’m detached from it, my day, while frustrating, doesn’t have the same feelings of hopelessness and despair that crept in closing all those duplicate vulnerability records.

Writing things like this down helps me document it, and remember it can be done. I definitely don’t want someone else to suffer for me to be happy, but I need to be reminded that I can be. I need to be reminded from time to time that the vision of the world that my brain sees isn’t as dark as it often appears.

One of the things that helps me when I’m down is to realize I’m not alone, that others are struggling too. Tonight was a reminder of the power of not being alone. It’s also why I wanted to share here, in case others were struggling to know that they’re not alone in their struggles too.

-af

Home

Gemlog

Atom feed