B E B E R E

Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige

So quiet today. I really don't have any reason to be here except to show up and get paid as I'm not allowed a secure connection to the company server (what I do could easily be done from home). That's reserved for the Higher Ups. My trees are trimmed, my reports distributed to all corners of Evil Empire. There's not much more for me to do until tomorrow, when I get my biweekly shipment of pay data. That'll be good for a couple days of massaging, querying, formatting into another yet another document that'll go largely unread.

Between little busywork projects that I make for myself, I work a bit of red wool on double pointed needles. The tube, though looking like the beginnings of a sock, is destined to become a lobster tail. I'm not sure how to execute the rest of the animal, but it'll come to me after a bit of trial and error.

From the other office, I hear one-sided conversations about mortgage refinancing, expensive German car repairs, expensive Second-Tier schools for the daughter. Listening to this is both slightly amusing and disheartening, as, though it causes me to relax a bit, it also fosters a sense of demotivation. Five years (and no cost-of-living increases) later, I'm barely scraping by. Why should I put myself out when someone who makes three times what I do doesn't? Terrible attitude, I know, but it's where I find myself now.

Where to go from here? I sometimes think of starting another business, a company within a company. What to sell, though? What services to render? I daydream as well of going back to school. In what? I don't want to end up with another degree that won't pay for itself. Sometimes I fantasize about dropping everything, taking a distribution and travelling the world until I run out of money.

Mostly, I think of poetry and music, how to translate and transcribe. It's what makes me feel most alive. I can't help doing it. Especially when my hands are active as they currently are: working the rough wool into the scarlet tube looped to the four needles.

(from Grimpen Mire)