Originally by: Marchocias

---

TL;DR: this is about a personal issue, so is likely to bore more people to death.
Everyone else, please feel free to call me a tard if you must! This probably isn't the place for this kind of depressive introspection.


OK. Heres the thing...

I work as a Software Engineer, on good money, with a team of colleagues who are great both to work with and to hang with. The office is full, but not cramped, with an undercurrent of hubbub, but no real bad noise to deal with. My commute is 15 minutes on foot, 10 minutes on the train, with the office almost directly opposite the station at the other end. Work is basically low stress (which occasional short bursts of high stress at deployment time).

For the last 6 months, increasingly, I have been suffering from headaches (which the doctor has put down to stress), and general ill-health (lots of colds, a bout of shingles). I also wake up every day with a curriously negative feeling that I cannot place, which over the course of the morning will transform into an indescribable anger at having to do whatever it is that is in front of me (usually debugging someone elses terrible code).

Thing is, I know it is a bit unreasonable for me to be angry at the work I'm paid to do; knowing this doesn't help in the slightest - in fact, it probably makes it worse, as I'm then ALSO angry at myself for being angry about nothing.

Anyway, today my anger boiled, and I just HAD to quit. I talked to my line manager, and tried to explain why I had to leave... I used various dramatic phrases like "I just can't bear it any more", and I said that "regarding our companies 'Drive To A $Billion', not only do I not care, but I despise the company so much I actually WANT it to fail, and so I probably shouldn't be working here"... but when he asked me what the actual problem was I couldn't define it. The best I could manage was to use a little phrase from the Eve forums a while back about "a thousand paper cuts".

On paper, my job is great, and when it comes down to it the only good reason I can come up with for quitting is simply "I don't want to do that any more", and that seems weak given I have no justification for it. Also, its also not true exactly, because I actually love software development, and I can't imagine doing anything else.

Basically, what I would like to know is:
Am I mental? Depressed? Do I need anger management?
Or, have I done the right thing... is this the opportunity to go get a job making computer games (something I've wanted to do since I was like 7 (weird, I know))?

Also - why am I asking YOU this? Whats wrong with me?

- Tom

---