The Thousand Mile Stare

I have acquired the Thousand Mile Stare at work.

I am not sure when it really started.  My sense of it was sometime around Thursday or Friday last week.  I think it is one of those things that one notices only after it has happened; the point of crossing over the line is never so precise as to be able to be exactly labeled.

The Thousand Mile Stare (originally called Thousand Yard Stare), for those that may not have heard the term before, refers to "the limp, unfocused gaze of a battle-weary soldier, but the symptom it describes may also be found among victims of other trauma.  A characteristic of post-traumatic stress disorder, the despondent stare reflects dissociation from trauma" (wikipedia.com).  It is the look and sense that events have simply overwhelmed one and retain one's sanity one has simply moved on.

Let us be clear:  I have been involved in no battle.  There is no trauma that I am aware of.  I have suffered no violent actions.  But my sense of the matter is the same.

It is the realization that, after four years of being in the same position, there may be a reason that traditionally I have moved on before this time.  The problems have simply become the every day accommodations that have to be endured.  Change is discussed about and talked about frequently but nothing ever really changes.  Power to implement change is denied or non-extant; dictates are expected to be executed no matter what their basis in reality.  There seem to be no consequences for the poor decision making of others, while any successes are simply brushed under the carpet without further adieu.

It is, in other words, an environment where failure is kept at bay by the simple expedient of ignoring it while success is allocated for the chosen few or simply slips away.

It is hard in such an environment to find motivation on a day to day basis.  Your work is never quite done.  Your successes are never quite noticed and failures, even if the result from the situation and not from you personally, are held against you.  The hope that something different is going happen, that something breakthrough is going to occur, has long disappeared.  There is nothing but the sense of the long slide petering off into twilight.

What to do?  This is the part that continues to bother and haunt me.  It is not an environment where effort invested results in perceivable dividends.  It is not an environment where professional growth leads anywhere.  It is not an environment where this time next year I will be doing anything different than this time last year.

But where else to go?  I have doing this long enough to realize that everywhere has elements of the same thing.  And something different?  What would that be?  How could that be viable?

I wish I knew.  All I know now is that every day as I get up in the morning there is a vague dread on my soul, a tiredness of spirit that I know will not disappear until I open the door to return home.