| 30 mar 2001 my life is a futile exercise, trying to fight against a tidal wave that is crashing down on me. everybody is clamoring to help me, but the frustrating thing is, i'm the only one who can do my task. so the entire collective effort has become a futile exercise as well. *sigh* i don't even have time to think free thoughts any more. it's compiling this, debugging this, banging my head on the desk, screaming out in anguish, nodding to my boss telling him i'm trying my hardest. but i'm ok. i can't see an end to this just yet, but someday... someday it will end. i guess they don't pay me six figures to do nothing, huh? i figure this is my karmic retribution for putzing around for so long. it's been what... anywhere from four to six months since i've done any hardcore work. so it's about time, i guess. although my brain is quite the ball of mush from being inactive for so long; i even pulled out my rubik's cube and played with it once in while to at least get some mental simulation for a change. i've noticed one thing about my week of hellacious stress... my dreams have gotten a lot more interesting! last night's slumber was a entire repeating episode of an adventure game, and each time my dream played through the sequence, something would change. the first time it was just sliding down a huge pathway, and the second time there was this added drama of a woman that i fell in love with and that later betrayed me, and the third time was a revisiting of that girl's role in my adventure and the things i could have done differently. i remember waking up at night having to go pee and worrying about the fact that i couldn't continue my fantastical escapades in the dream world. i think dreams are quite fun. even though i have a hard time remembering them after consciousness and reality set in, i always remember enjoying the random stuff that happens. why do we dream? the theory i've heard is that the mind if flipping through past images and occurences, but that doesn't explain the emotions and wishes that often pop up. i've heard of things called "lucid dreams" where the person asleep actually realizes that he's in a dream, and afterwards, he can control what goes on. i think that would be quite a venture into a person's id, where his desires have free reign on this imaginary world. i've never had a lucid dream. i've heard that they can be induced somehow, by shining a bright light on a person while he's sleeping. never tried it, but it sounds quite tasty. a friend, vicki, called me today at work and talked for a while about career stuff. i admire her because she still seems to have ambition, i.e. she wants to expand her skill sets and make herself more marketable. i think i stopped doing that a long time ago. like i said, i'm all about coasting now. i've been the "fabulous engineer" before, and while it was good for my pride and my stature in the company, i didn't feel like the benefits justified the effort. i don't have much of an ego, so i'm simply proud of proving myself once, but i really don't need to feed my ego by doing it over and over again. but can there be progress without ambition? i've become quite the "reasonable man." i don't achieve spectacular feats, and i don't expect spectacular rewards. i've changed from the intense, overachieving worker i used to be. funny thing is, i never really worked that hard in my life. until i started my first job. i guess that was because "the job" is the culmination of everything i had worked for. ever since i was a kid, it was about getting good grades to get into a good college. and then it was getting good grades in college to land a good job. and then what? that was it, i was told. so having reached a destination of sorts, i just felt that i had to make a massive ear-shattering 50-megawatt entrance into the land of the professionals. i did that for two and a half years. and went through two nervous breakdowns in two months. yup. "the reasonable man adapts himself to the world. the unreasonable one persists in tryin got adapt the world to himself. therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - george bernard shaw so if you want progress, i'm not the one. any more. |