I've been manic for the last month. Since May, I think, at least. Or at least this is what I've been telling people (my cousins at dinner on Friday, my co-coach at soccer). Here are the symptoms:
- I have been pacing around the office, and am clocking around 30K steps a day
- I have been skipping lunch at work
- I have been biking back from work, and am absolutely catatonic until basically the next day, when I do it all over again
- I have not been calling my parents or texting anyone back
- I have lost 5-10lbs depending on when you think this started
- I keep waking up at like 4AM, regardless of when I go to bed
I have been in stressful situations before. I think UChicago was one 4 year long stress dream. But I've never reacted quite like this. On one hand, I am thrilled to be reversing five years of weight gain. On the other hand, my parents are concerned. I suppose, since I'm writing this, so am I.
When in doubt, blame my job. Objective functions are unclear so I'm not sure if I'm doing the right things to get what I want, my priorities and management shift constantly, and I was never good at prioritizing things to begin with. The end result is a bunch of stress, a lot of anxiety, and not much productivity.
Nominally, being a data scientist at Meta should have a straightforward objective function: do analysis, change or improve what the team is working on, profit. But in practice, there are ten engineers running a variety of tests at all times that require different levels of supervision, visibility is hard to come by, and the data is so messy doing anything risks undermining my credibility. There are solutions to this I know. Don't snack, become close to the engineers, have them check your numbers and your logging, be able to do things yourself and tell whoever will listen about them. But I'm still getting my ass kicked, due to what I can only assume are a variety of personal failings.
I've felt like this before. Last time at Meta I barely wanted to speak to my manager, I had worked for weeks non-stop, and I was convinced that nothing I did made any sense or would make any difference even if it did. Thankfully, I was laid off the next week.
I don't want to be laid off again. My mom said to find a new job, if this is how I'm reacting to this one. I don't think I need to do that, but how do I feel like myself again? I'm forgetting why I wanted to do this: to be like Matt Levine, to work on my systematic thinking, my prioritization, and my clarity.