RE: I want to write... but I'm too disgusted with myself to begin...
I know how you feel bro. It ends up being a tough position because you want to feel super productive and bring down mad bits or $ and do everything at home so that when your wife comes home everything is happy but it is tough. I have had my struggles on finding good consistent IT work in Tucson and it has gotten bad enough that I pretty much have a bad attitude about it and don't even want to waste my time anymore with it here. I recently wasted my time interviewing for a cloud computing position and they had me take all these assessments and all this and that and at the end of it they hired another guy who was friends with someone who already worked there so the position wasn't even available in the first place.
Hopefully you can find the right motivation and balance at home to be in a good mindset. I know it has been hard for me at times to figure out what I need to be doing to be most productive around here.
I can't wait til' the HR structure is wholly disrupted. I fucking hate everything about the "new job process".
Fucking assembly-line madness. The only way to get anything that isn't a soul sucking experience is through a friend into an interesting startup, at least for people with our personality types (and it sounds like we are very similar).
My first job out of Special Forces in the civilian world was literally packing boxes in a warehouse because that's all I could find. They got a tax write-off on the deal for 'hiring a vet' and I got to use their insurance policy to get a herniated disc shaved off :)
Fair trade, I suppose.
Yeah I feel ya. It can be frustrating for sure.