October 18, 1999

Lone Day of October

It amuses me that there are no entries for today in previous years.

So, yeah, I've flaked. About time, perhaps. I think I first started this journal in response to knowing I was depressed about losing Mark; and now that the relationship is really done, I seem to be getting on with the reality of living my life. I don't seem to have to be as conscious, everyday, of the worth of living each day, now. It's more natural to just go through each day.

Then again. I may just be back-sliding and some of it attributable to not being conscious and not keeping up with this. Maybe the hardest and most valuable lesson I should have learned from Mark, as I think it really was what he was trying to teach me, was to stay conscious every day and make my decisions with thought rather than by letting things just happen. Too many of the recent days at work have felt too much like the days that used to happen. High-pressure, don't know where I'm going, what the hell I'm doing at this 'engineering thing' when I can't seem to keep my brain straight or remember anything that I really should remember and always afraid of the crazy code thing. Making mistakes when I don't want to be making mistakes and it's not that much fun anymore. Sometimes I envy my sister, who decided to not be an engineer and stuck to it through some really awful times. I don't know if she's any happier, but it was another path.

There's this weird 'Latter Day Saints' commercial where this guy gets into this taxi and when the driver says "Where do you want to go?" the guy says, "I dunno, just take me where everyone else goes." There may well be more to Microsoft's "Where do you want to go today?" ad campaign. There may not. See where everyone else is taking their e-commerce business? Why not follow the crowd?

Where do I want to go today?

I don't know. Uhm... let's just do what everyone else does, go to work, do some stuff, talk with people, go home and eat dinner, go to sleep and try it all again tomorrow...

THAT time of year. So I guess I should try and beat it, but I'm just back from the Albuquerque trip, which was wonderful, and dealing with the fallout from being back to work after a week away, which was just hell. Tomorrow I'm winging my way out to San Jose to deal with an FAE conference and then stay with the Horde for a few days. That should be good.

Some of it may just be from realizing that I'm another year older. Birthdays seem so odd, now. I still remember, as a kid, being so very, very eager for another Birthday, another step up that so-well-defined ladder, and now it's just all blurring together into getting just a bit older. Though, as Cary says, it's certainly better than the alternative.

I should fill in some things in the last days. I actually wrote a list of what happened on the vacation, and I have the last week to fill in a bit at a time. Though I might just do it by major happenings rather than minor every-day. There's already been three snowfalls and it isn't even Halloween, yet. The trip to Albuquerque was really, really fun, but tiring in ways I hadn't wanted or expected. There were, however, treasures of experience to be found, so I really should be conscious of those.

I'll be better.

Oh, yeah, the biscuit recipe that the reader sent has been key to my finally figuring out how to make really, truly good biscuits. Finally did them right on Saturday, it's been months since I've been in search of the Perfect Biscuit and now it's happened, which is very nice.

More when I can.

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