One year ago, I was really really pissed off. I was discussing a facet of a project that I was very unhappy with, and the person I was talking to tried to reason that my opinion on the subject was negated because I didn’t “get it.”

Is there anything more insulting than telling someone with four years of experience on a project that their opinion is invalid because they don’t understand something that they helped to build?

Ooh. I was angry. I’m glad that project digested itself out of existence. Being really passionate about your job can be very exciting (getting paid to do what you love! Yes! The ideal!), but the downside is that you’re deeply, intimately, intrinsically emotionally invested in the results, and it can be deeply, intimately, intrinsically emotionally exausting.

The flipside of that, of course, is artery-numbing apathy.

Back when I was a histrionic thespian, I was very emotionally dramatic. I justified this behavior by saying that, as a performer, my emotions were my palette, and that it was my duty to keep myself familiar with all those emotions. Therefore, every week I needed to experience exalted happiness, abject misery, rage that could blow down a house, incredulity, hysterics, blistering confusion, etc etc etc. Needless to say, I was also 17 years old.

I don’t think I ever worked on artery-numbing apathy back then. Good thing I’m making up for lost time. Ooh, look: I’m working on sarcasm, too.