It's been a rough couple of weeks at the gig but things are now back on track. After I twisted my wrist, which is now healed to the point where I don't think about it more than once or twice a day, I missed a couple days of work. Wouldn't you know that's when all the systems went to hell, hell being a relative term. But you know the axiom about the squeeky wheel. So everybody went into 'drop all pretenses of success' mode for a short time, which put me on notice to deliver or else. It got to the point at which I wasn't eating lunch (gasp!) and missing entire days of blogging (OMG!).
Now these are levels of deprivation because of stress from work I am greatly unaccustomed to. I consider myself somewhat underemployed, and basically everything I do is supposed to be a walk in the park as well as an exercise in humility. But this was actually raising my level of paranoia, not just my alertness. Now that things have settled down a bit, I'm appropriately inspired and grateful. I do so very much enjoy my position.
I thought about it driving home yesterday. I've had the good fortune to have doubled my salary twice in my life. Since I expect to work another 15 years, I can probably do it again. Then again with inflation coming, it might take less time and mean less as well. Still, I'm fortunate. Life has provided me the opportunity to scrimp at a high level.
Once upon a time, I thought I would never spend so much time writing and being thoughtful. I had plenty of personality and ambition. I think of this when I remember some Ethiopian friends I used to see regularly back in my party days. Ethiopia has been on my mind recently and I remember the kind of elitish manners that used to get me places when I appeared to be more young and promising than I am today. But thanks to Gil Masters, whom I have never had the opportunity to bitchslap, I never got my undergrad transfer to Stanford - and thus all of the computer ideas I've had for years died in the mediocrity of State. I realized that I would not be making the kind of money that would let me have the freedom I desired in the world, and so I went inward instead and started my experiments there.
I don't think I've considered the consequences of that much, nor the implications of similar inward turnings in my and other generations. But suddenly it appears clear as day in the new graphic novel of Crime and Punishment that I purchased yesterday. Raskolnikov turns inward because of penury, being a shadow of himself and is wracked with feelings of exile from a noble arena. It is something I understand very well. Once the L shaped recession continues, college students looking for work all over will be feeling the same thing. They will not have the opportunity to scrimp at a high level.
I'm entertaining new dreams of writing code for my own fortune. The task has been delayed because of my diet and my new hair. I've done those things first to get me out of my old head and into a new higher energy profile. And I'm also gaming a bit less and focusing on small perfections. I have a broad and deliberate agenda that feels more and more comfortable, and it is focus more and more on local things happening within my aegis of control. So I am turning some of the intellectualism off and industriousness on, I am more producing and less analyzing.
When I look in the mirror, I surprise myself. I haven't worn my hair since, I don't know, 96? It's weird that I have to remind myself to shampoo and brush it. It has a strange texture which is somewhat unique. Unlike most brothers I know, my hair is very straight at the roots and than it makes bigger curls. It's afro-like at a distance but close up it's textured, like a dry jheri curl or very tiny dreads. It curls up that way when I wash it and I can brush it back and it stays neatly lumpy. I'd have to comb it out to be pure afro. It's a bit odd because when I was kid I had 'bbs in the kitchen' like everybody else, but something happened. My hair grows very quickly and I'm trying to figure the right length.
Heh. I'm talking about my hair. That's how to relax during an economic calamity.
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