Sometimes when you have spent all day working on something and you haven’t managed to get anywhere, it’s time to give up. Not permanently, after all you still want to get it done. But temporarily. Just to catch your breath and come back fresh.

Yesterday, I spent all day working on a project. And for most of the day, I was stuck on a small section of the code. At most 20 lines of code. But I couldn’t find what was wrong with it. No matter what I tried it wouldn’t work. I went over and over the same little section of code. But no matter how many times I looked at it, it still looked right to me.

So I decided that the problem must be data related. I re-worked and went over every step of code leading up to the function that didn’t work. Followed the data through the entire chain. I even rewrote some of it to make it a little more efficient and to ensure that I wasn’t corrupting the data. Nothing. The same function still didn’t work. At about 5:15, I decided to give up for the day. I had spent all day working, but I really hadn’t accomplished much of anything.

I headed home for a much needed break and some dinner. I can tell you I was really frustrated and extraordinarily tired from beating my head against this issue all day. But as I was driving home, a possible solution occurred to me. I dismissed it as too simple, but still kept it in the back of my mind. Slept on it, and when I got up this morning, it still seemed like a good idea. It was only a small change, and it was in the function I had originally thought it was in. So I tried it. And it worked!

I had spent all day yesterday working on this issue and had gotten nowhere. But when I finally gave up and went home for the day, the answer came to me. All I needed was to take a break. Sometimes when you feel like you are getting nowhere, it’s just time to take a break.

I’ve been a little depressed lately. And the reason is that I feel stuck. My entire life feels like it is stuck in between being a mature adult, and being an immature young adult who is still trying to find out what to do with his life. And being stuck in between, I don’t feel like I can really relate to the people around me who are in one phase or another.

On one side, I have my mature friends. The people I graduated from college with. I don’t really feel like they are more mature than me, but at the same time I do. The problem is that they are all in a different place in their lives than I am. Most of them are married and well established in their careers. A lot of them even have multiple kids. Whereas I’m not married, and I don’t feel all that well established in my career. While they are all building their families and advancing in their chosen careers, I’m still single and still at the bottom of my chosen career path. And as we all get older, I find that I have less and less in common with most of them.

On the other side I have my relatively immature friends. They are mostly younger than me, and haven’t reached the point where they are really working on their future. Mostly they are single and for the most part are still in college. They live from paycheck to paycheck and don’t really worry too much about what they are going to do with their lives. They aren’t really immature, they just haven’t moved past the college phase yet. And the truth is that I really don’t relate to them either. Because I am past the college phase.

My problem is that I’m stuck in between. I’m past the friends who are still in school and are still finding out who they are, but I’m behind the ones who are out their building their lives. And I feel like I’m stuck. I’m too old to go back, but I somehow can’t go forward either. It’s like my life is in a permanent holding pattern. Since I graduated from college, about 4 years ago, almost nothing has changed in my life. Which is depressing. Mainly because I have no idea what I did wrong to be left behind, and I find I have less and less in common with everyone around me. So, I’m feeling a little down right now.