After A Bad Night ...

In my experience, comes a bad day.

I don't think I'm exaggerating when I refer to today as being a Bad Day.

My first, last and only escape from my head and my voices - no matter how loud - has been to identify with my work and to put my head down and do nothing but work, hard, on whatever it is that's been working in my brain.

In a special compartment in my head I keep some properly exciting (well, to me) projects that need to be attended to and need to take a little more of my brain power than a normal problem and, after the other night, I decided to dust one off and give it a whirl.

Today, I developed an entirely new and not-previously-tried method to calculate default risk in unsecured debt portfolios. Sounds like nothing? It's been one of the "Holy Grail" items - to be able to not just take the credit bureaus word for it, and I've done it.

Admittedly, it's a small sample size (~21,000). Admittedly, it's a little rough and ready (and certainly not ready to be turned into something for IP protection). But, but, but ... it works.

I did something like this in summer 2009, bringing a measurement model to a non-standard mortgage lender in central Europe that massively improved asset quality in 3-, 6- and 12-month outcome windows, and it felt SO good to do.

Today?

Nothing.

Not.

A.

Damn.

Thing.

My fear is that the beginning of the end. Life's taken so much from me, the love of my life, the work that my skills make me able to perform, the ability to demonstrate to the world that I am not the monster portrayed by others...and now this.

I feel tempted to go out to the river tonight and shout at the sky, shout "WHAT ELSE?!" - there's so little I can imagine that I still have that life can take from me so maybe my inevitability is at least my regaining control by the power of (self) destruction.