Chapter 19
"I wanted to personally congratulate you on this project. We are actually thinking of submitting this project to Harnes Korage. It might actually qualify for an award. It is being noticed by the industry at large for its innovation. A lot of the younger culture has taken notice of it. It is being referred at large on that picture blog, Imblr…"
I could not remember the last time my father eyed me with such fondness and admiration. His eyes were filled with a level of pride that I was not used to. I wished that I could bask freely in the look, because it is a look that I had always yearned from my father, but for some reason I couldn't openly accept it. The look only reminded me of all the other times I went above and beyond to get that look of pride in his eyes. Now it just filled me with resentment.
All I could do was look back at him in the blank way he stared at me whenever I tried to show him some kind of emotion.
"Thank you," I said in a voice deprived of any inflection and a face as blank as unused paper.
"You have really worked harder than anyone I have known over the past few weeks and your hard work is paying off."
I forced a smile and nodded. I had worked hard. Functioning on four hours of sleep just to make some sense of some code to make an assigned robot do something. Implementing all my years of learning programming into doing something
How could I not enjoy words that I had wanted to hear all my life. My father seemed a bit taken aback by my unenthused reaction.
I had worked hard for this project and I was proud…but it was just not me. But it was my fault for still being here. I'd focused on this project at the behest of all else.
And please, don't get me wrong. My whole life had not become worthless because Henry Walker was no longer in it. I always tried to convince myself that I successfully separated my personal life from my professional and educational. My professional and education achievements had always been in their own realm, on their own plane. What I couldn't deny was how my disorganized personal life sometimes would drive me to meet my professional and educational goals, to the exclusion of everything else.
When I didn't say much, my father pressed, "What do you have to say for yourself?"
The last time my father asked me this was when I graduated 3rd from one of the top colleges in the country. It wasn't first but it was good enough.
"Not much. Is there anything more that I need to know today?" I asked, not feeling comfortable with all this attention being allotted to me. It was too unnatural. And you know what they say: we fear what we don't know.
My father seemed a bit stunned by my curtness and business tone. After years of begging and begging to be informal with him, I just gave up. I'd given up on a lot of things emotionally for the past few weeks and it had made me quite the hard worker.
"You can go ahead and take the rest of the day off," he said next, surprising me.
