At 6pm, my phone unexpectedly uttered a loud notification alarm, followed by the rattle of a small device vibrating on a tabletop. The little plastic trackball shines the occasional yellow before fading to darkness.
When I unlock the device to see what it's on about, I'm presented with the picture of a little pink squid. Above the chibi mollusk, a yellow speech bubble reads off "Time to work! Draw something!!!" This isn't the first time it's done this; in fact, it's been doing this for over two days now. Each time reading messages like:
One thing that occurred to me today is that we really don't have a good place to put projects on deninet. For a while, I had planned on implementing project management features on the site. I did manage to start some of that by adding events and tasks. The further I got, however, the more it became obvious that "wasn't us". Other sites do project management far better and if anything, we should leverage those.
The last two weeks have been more than a little draining. I've been pushing to complete a major update for a web-based class at work. While I have been working with the product for several months now, it was only a few weeks ago that I saw it in actual use. That made a huge difference to me and cemented a lot of what I was working on. I've been digging through the course material, rewriting relevant sections and discarding outdated ones. Friday I finished most of the slides, leaving only a few to complete tomorrow morning. I'll have until Wednesday to complete all the voice recording.
The weekend is just getting started here. Pazi and I had a quiet breakfast of soy chirzo and toast. There was a call with Trice, most of which I had to duck out to take a shower. I would have waited, but something is making me profoundly uncomfortable in a rather sensitive spot. Infection? Inflammation? Something.
The first social network I joined was LiveJournal back in 2001. At the time, I thought of it purely as an online journaling system. I didn't understand how the friending mechanism worked, nor the deceptive name applied to the feature (something that has thankfully been replaced with "following" on other sites). I often wrote entries there expecting no one to ever read them. It often felt like writing letters to no one in particular, then casting them upon the will of the four winds to whomever would find them.
I always feel disconnected and surreal whenever I return to the US after an international assignment.
The first thing I notice is the change in sound. After three weeks in Germany, the sound and rhythm of American English sounds oddly foreign. I found this welcome on my previous trips, but this time I found myself missing the distinctive pattern of German before boarding my first flight home. Even the sound of my own voice seems oddly out of place.
Two nights ago my vacation started. I've set aside two weeks of time away from work, away from software training and IT consulting. I'll be spending part of it with a friend in Seattle, and the other half at home. You would think that I'd be thrilled for this opportunity to relax, to unwind, to recharge for the next round of professional tasks. You'd think that.
I feel I owe everyone an apology for my insensitive (if honest) query in my last post. I obviously wasn't as ponderous as I usually expect of me, and instead let my frustration and lack of ability to act influence my writing.
She had forgotten the simple relaxation of housework. Most of the time, it was a recurring annoyance. Lately she hardly had the time to pick up her apartment, wash the dishes, or even do laundry. Her life had become a blur of airports, hotels, and clients from opposite ends of the nation. The little time she was home, such mundane tasks only got in her way.
Recent comments