I finally finished writing installation documentation today. I ended up closing Netscape Composer and just editing the HTML by hand in vi. This was so much the right thing to do; I flew through adding all the extra pieces and polishing it, and used nifty vi search/replace tricks to make all the environment variables dark blue. Why on earth would someone write an HTML generator that doesn't have search & replace? Granted, the one that comes with our product doesn't either... but it's not supposed to be sophisticated.

Sometimes I think I'd be happier working on a project that really excited me. Not that I'm actively unhappy, but sometimes it hurts a little how cynical I am about this thing I'm helping to make. It's not a bad thing, but it's a thing that doesn't have any real meaning to me. Marketing force automation. I think I'd enjoy work more if I was working on something like sysadmin force automation, something where I not only understood the functional problems I was trying to solve, but where I cared deeply about solving them.

I guess I should also keep in mind that this is really the low point of the development cycle for me. All the new code is done, even all the interesting bug-fixing is done, it's just polishing and documentation and organising. Now is when the the focus is all on what it looks like and how to talk about what it does; not the most exciting part for me. Although again this part might be exciting if I was excited about what our stuff looked like and what it did... it's a sort of vicious circle, isn't it?. I should check in with myself in a month, when we're back to new development, and see how I'm feeling.

I'm at home now, playing Pern with half of my attention and listening to the soundtrack to Ami-Chan No Hatsukoi and catching up on Liralen's journal. Eric showed up a little bit ago to re-watch the first half of the Buffy season finale with Jim; in about thirty minutes Marith should be getting here to watch the second half with us when it airs (finally) at 8. I'll enjoy it, I know, but right now I'm jittering frustrated again. Too many demands on my time; it's hard to balance needing to be present on Pern with wanting to throw myself into writing, and then to balance both of those with television and Jim... plus I just deal really badly with knowing there's a deadline. I need lots of structure to my life or I get pretty unhappy, but doing something to 'fill in the time' -- knowing I have a set amount of time left to write in -- is hard for me. I keep watching the clock, waiting for the time to be over, hyper-alert and jumping at any noise. Not the best mood for writing in.

Liralen mentioned, in her Saturday entry, wondering how she could alleviate some of my worry about whether or not we'd synch up in person. I wrote her a reply, and in doing so was able to pinpoint my concern better. It's not about us having the same experience really, but about whether or not I can communicate myself to her. Online right now it's so effortless even when it's effortful -- by which I guess I mean that it's really safe to try, and I don't mind it when it takes work to get things across. All the best relationships take some of that work, I think, because there's just so much to people, and once you start getting into the fine details it's endless and wonderful.

There's more to that thought, but Jim just stuck his head into the room to remind me that it's time for Buffy -- so I'm off to watch it. Trip is here, which should be really great; I haven't seen him in ages and ages, and that's really hard and sad to get used to after seeing him almost every day for the last few years.

Back, one last time. It's just after midnight. Buffy was pretty good, although not good enough to make up for the two-month delay in showing it. It was in fact really great to see Trip, although it also made me sad all over again that I'm not seeing him as much as I used to. Better to see him sporadically than not at all, though. After the show Eric and Jim talked, and I talked some to Trip and some to Marith. I was feeling pretty fried though, and as time went on I got more and more exhausted and filled with formless upset, until finally right around ten I hugged Trip one more time and then kicked everyone out so I could spend some deeply-needed time alone with Jim. We spent a while talking about our day and stuff, and I ate an Amy's broccoli and cheddar pot pie -- organic vegetarian frozen dinners! -- and felt more together. Still tense and restless though, so I started playing Super Puzzle Fighter on the playstation and Jim joined me pretty quickly. That was fun; it's a pretty simple, silly game, but involving, and we had a good time with it.

I keep going back to the stuff Liralen wrote on Saturday; I'm having all these strong emotional reactions to it and I don't know why. There's no real context for the way I feel, and none of the explanations I'm coming up with make sense to me. Jim and I talked about it for a while, and he came up with an idea that seems to fit and made me feel better, but I don't feel like that's all of it. Meanwhile, as I worry and fret at a problem which isn't really a problem at all -- feeling things -- my emotions are swirling around like oil on water, too close to the surface for my comfort and incredibly unruly. I keep writing in the hopes that suddenly I'll understand, but I know the real answer is just to let it happen and, tomorrow, see what sort of clarity there is. A lot of the difficulty here is that it takes me a long time to figure out which emotions I'm having when they're this strong. Is this upset or happiness or anger or fear or sadness? No idea; right now I can only tell there's something big going on. I'm glad that everyone doesn't have this problem; it'd make the world unbearable.

Anyway. It's now nearly 1230, and writing that last paragraph ten or fifteen times until I got it right does seem to have settled things somewhat. Tomorrow, between work and going to see Norm and all the other things that fill up my day I'll find some time to talk to Liralen and see if she can help me get untangled. And to think I was complaining a few entries ago that I wasn't writing about my emotions enough!

Off to bed, and a warm sleepy Jim to cuddle.