The Weight of the Office

When I was a child, my father grabbed my shoulder and pointed out at a speck of a boat, black against the radiantly blue ocean.

“That,” he said, “is a spy vessel. They’re spying on me.”

I believed him—the reason we were in Okinawa was his work on classified projects, and people who work on those projects are closely monitored. My whole childhood, one of the repeated refrains was that because of his job, we were under constant surveillance. I grew up knowing that I was being watched and hearing about security interviews, knowing that someone was likely monitoring my phone calls, my legal record, my professional accomplishments, and could, at any time, damage my father’s job because I had done something wrong.

Correct or incorrect, that’s stayed with me. When I took up engineering, it was merely an extension of that mentality: a choice to voluntarily enter an environment where I could be monitored that closely, where I might have to ask for permission to leave the country.

Why? For money. For stability. For security.

As I approach finally leaving the profession, I find myself realizing how much of my life I’ve spent ruthlessly suppressing myself in order not to damage my job or my relatives’ jobs. I’ve devoted huge amounts of time and energy to making sure I look okay to a potential investigator, watching my behavior so that I would never do anything that could be a problem, and carrying around massive amounts of guilt and paranoia.

I’m exhausted. Truly. The weight of living constantly aware of being surveilled, of constantly having to comply to someone’s antiquated, deeply Christian view of what makes someone suspicious is staggering.

In a month or so, I’ll be able to put it aside. I honestly think it’ll take a day or two to sink in, but being free of that is an incredible gift.

The office, especially as an engineer, is far too heavy to keep carrying.