I am struggling with whether or not to start karate again. I worked out for over 8 years, and then 4 years ago walked away. I know now that I left because it was no longer satisfying. The situation wasn’t fulfilling my needs anymore. However, since I didn’t have good closure with it I still feel the urge to put the gi back on and return to active status. This could be an incredible god idea, or a really bad one. I need to spend some more time sorting this out to know for sure.
The Illinois State government is going to change in a big way outwardly this January. A democrat was elected for the first time in years. Due to budget cuts there are massive early retirements happening between now and January 1. The retirements are going to cause ripples as people move around to take advantage of openings. The new administration will cause still more ripples as all the agency heads will be replaced, and then the top staff at each agency will shift. As a consultant I get a front row seat to the show; I only hope that it doesn’t spill over into my section of the audience.
I am thinking of selling my Audi TT again. I tried this in August but since it still has two years to run on the lease the buyout is too high to sell it out right. This time I am planning on selling the right to assume the lease. You have to be an Illinois resident, as the leasing company won’t transfer across state lines due to tax reasons. And there is a total of $740 in fees to be paid. It would be nice to get out of this lease and use the saved $550 each month to pay off the Lexus sooner.
For the first time in weeks I didn’t check all the online auction sites for Apple Powerbooks yesterday. I’ll have to check them all twice today. Ha! Michele and I are very seriously considering switching from Windows and Intel to Mac OS X and PowerPC. She wants to make DVD copies of all her “I Love Lucy” episodes (180 of them), and she feels that the reduced virus threat on Mac will make her feel safer about internet surfing. I like the stability of a Unix based OS, along with the elegance of a world-class user interface. Also the form-factor of the Powerbook just can’t be beat. I think we’ll start the switch in the spring with an eMac for her and then a Powerbook for me.
I’m thinking about paying the nominal fee to moveable type, the content management software that I use for this site. I want to due this for a couple of reasons. First, it is very well written software and it has made my site much easier to maintain. Second, I get free exposure on their site each time I update my blog. I currently average about 12-15 hits per week on my site. I suspect that most of these are search engine bots, and or myself. I would like to have more people see and respond to my postings. It’s no fun exposing yourself in public if no one’s looking.
I finally got around to debugging my moveable type setup. This means that the history link on the navigation panel to your right now works. Eventually I’ll have to dress up the archive page format, but for now I’m happy that everything is available.
Michele and I are taking a week-long cruise around the Hawaiian Islands for Christmas this year. We are flying out to Honolulu a couple of days early so that we’ll have time to recover from the 9-hour flight. After we get back I am taking a couple of days off, including New Year’s Day. My plan is to return to work on Thursday, January 2nd. Michele’s question to me was why? Why not take that Thursday and Friday off as well? So far I am having a hard time coming up with an answer that doesn’t sound like bullshit.
For years I worked as an employee. I had limited time off and had to color within the lines as it were. Now I am self-employed, I still like to color within the lines, but I get to draw the lines too. I think that after years of corporate conditioning I find it hard to cross the boundaries that used to be in place. I feel like a dog whose yard has always been equipped with an invisible fence. I am used to not crossing the line due to repeated conditioning. Even though I’ve moved to a new yard (self-employment) I am very wary of the invisible line I imagine is there.
I could say that I am comfortable with boundaries imposed on me by outside forces, but that wouldn’t be true. I don’t like being restricted arbitrarily. However, I do engage in ducking responsibility when it suits me. Not taking the first two working days of January off absolves me of taking responsibility for setting boundaries for myself that are different than my peers. If I take those two days off I feel as if I am setting myself further apart from my co-workers. Inwardly I have always felt different from my peers, acting differently outwardly is very difficult at times.
During the past couple of years I have started to express the truth of who I am more openly and honestly than ever before. Whereas I used to wear suits and ties to look professional I now wear slacks with suspenders because it is comfortable for me. It was hard at first to be visible different from nearly everyone I saw. I had to work long and hard to overcome my fear of appearing to be different.
I think I am learning an important lesson of being an adult. Instead of looking to others to set boundaries that are acceptable I am learning to trust my own instincts to set limits for myself. Other people are not me, they don’t know what motivates me or how I wish to approach life. Only I can know that, and only I can create situations that are pleasing to me. Whether I take those two days off in January isn’t important. Understanding the reason why I am working or not working is important. Going to work because I think it will look good to others is a lousy reason.
Now that I have identified the reason for wanting to work those two days I need to set that aside and try to find my truth about working or not working those days. This will be difficult, as I have to sort through all my reasons and identify those that are truly mine and those that are imposed upon me from outside. In the end I must be content with my reasons, in the end I must make the decision for myself and not for anyone else.
I just upgraded my home PC from Windows 2000 to Windows XP Professional. From start to finish less than 70 minutes. This was by far the easiest Windows install I have ever done, and I have done more than a few.
My initial PC OS was IBM’s OS 2 version 2.1. We were using at work and I wanted the same thing at home. After Warp came out I upgraded to it and continued to use OS 2 for a time. Eventually I migrated to Windows 3.11 as I was tired of all my Windows applications not working under OS 2.
From Windows 3.11 I moved onto Windows 95, then 98, and eventually Windows 2000 Professional. Along the way I have also experimented with BeOS, QNX, and Linux.
My dream is to rid myself of Windows entirely and move to Mac OS X. However, that will require getting a Macintosh. The Mac of my dreams is a Powerbook G4 which is pricey to say the least. So for now I’ll make due with XP.
Okay, I’m fickle, I admit it. For some time now I have lusted after an Apple Titanium Powerbook G4 notebook computer. It has everything I want in a portable computer in the most pleasing form factor I’ve ever seen. It is unique.
Well, it was unique. It seems that Best Buy is horning in on the upscale notebook computer market. Their entry is the vpr Matrix 200A5, a stunning new notebook computer designed by Porsche. Like the Powerbook it has a 15.2 wide screen LCD and a slot loading combination DVD-CDRW drive. At 6.4 pounds, the Matirx is just slightly heavier than the Powerbook.
Comparing the two is still apples to oranges. The Matrix is Intell based and runs Windows whereas the Apple is PowerPC based and runs Mac OS X. The Mac processor clocks in at 800 MHz where the Matrix sports a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4 mobile processor. If you believe the propaganda the two are roughly equivalent performers.
I must admit that where my decision based purely on the technical specs I would be leaning towards the vpr Matrix 200A5. At $2400 it is $800 cheaper than the base 800 MHz Powerbook G4. However, there is an elegance, a certain panache to the Titanium Powerbook that hasn’t been matched. Yet.
Why do restuarants find it necessary to play music constantly in the background? When I go out to eat I want to enjoy my food, and the conversation with my companion. I don’t want to have to yell over the too loud music. This is a case where just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
And if you are going to force me to listen to music, please select something other than angry grunge music. I wouldn’t listen to that atonal crap in my home, why should I have to pay for the experience?
I find that I am in a bit of a quandary this morning. I know from the Comptroller’s web site that my latest check was cut on the 18th, which was last Friday. Assuming that the state doesn’t come into work on Saturday just to mail things in a timely fashion, it was mail on Monday. The man I subcontract through, therefore, should have it in hand no later than today. There is a good chance he had it yesterday. He is going to be out of the office starting this afternoon about 2, until Monday. So if he doesn’t walk up to me before he leaves today and hand me a check the earliest I’ll get it is next Monday, five days from now. Now, we don’t need it immediately, but I don’t like that it is starting to become a habit with him to take a week or more to process the check and pay me. I don’t want to blaze into his office and attack him because he will only become defensive and then I won’t get anywhere. I do want to inquire as to the status of my check. By saying all of this here I feel less out of control and better setup to approach him without making him defensive. I am not trying to take care of him, I just want to maximize the potential that I get what I want out of our discussion, which is my check. And an understanding that I don’t appreciate the length of time it appears to be taking him to deposit the state check and pay me.
By stating the situation here I am clearer on what I want and need. I know that I need to ask him as to the status of my check. Depending upon his answer I am prepared to let him know the truth of how it feels to be unimportant enough to not get more timely treatment. Not attacking, not yelling, just plainly stating that it doesn’t feel good to have to ask about my check. And that it feels even worse to have him say he hasn’t had time to deal with it yet. It is hard for me to allow myself to say these things because I don’t feel like I should. For me this is about confronting “dad” in a major way. As I say that I realize that I must have set this situation up for exactly that reason. Since the man I subcontract through hits several of my dad issues, having this check situation gives me the opportunity to grow past some of my fears about being a child around authority figures. I am afraid that he will get angry at me if I confront him about this check. Just like I am afraid of my father shutting me down when I try to confront him. I need to know going into his office what I am going to say and how I am going to say it. And I need to be strong enough to take care of little Mark when the pressure from outside tells him to be quiet. Always in the past I have been afraid to confront people like this because little Mark could never confront his father. I was always scared that he’d leave or stop taking care of me or something if I ever confronted him on anything. When I have contact with someone else who brings up my dad issues I get trapped by this fear of confrontation. Now I have created a situation where I have a legitimate reason to confront a person who feels like my dad in some situations. I need this so that I can start to move away from my default posture in this area. Getting paid today or next Monday isn’t the real issue. Money never is the real issue. Being able to say, hey, having you delay my payment for no good reason doesn’t feel good to me and I don’t like it; that is the real situation here. I need to stand up for how I feel regardless of how the authority figure wants me to feel or act.
Now I am getting it. Now I feel much more like me. I don’t care what he does. I don’t care how he handles this situation. I don’t want to build karma with the man over something this small. What I do care about is how I am treating me, how I am treating little Mark. I need to stand up and be heard, and I need to show little Mark that he isn’t bad and that I am not upset with him. Then I will have gotten paid in a way that money can’t buy.
I am really feeling ADD this morning. When I got to work I discovered that I had left my Palm Pilot at home. I use this tool throughout the day, and especially at lunch when it serves as my electronic book reader. When I realized that I had forgotten it I nearly drove the 40 minute round trip to get it.
When I talked to my wife on the phone she offered to bring it to me. This grew into our having lunch together since she would be in town anyway. As much as I enjoy having meals out with her I couldn’t let myself have this lunch. I need for some things to be the same way and one of those is my Tuesday lunch.
Every week I have chili at a local hole-in-the-wall on Tuesday. I go that day because the woman dishing it up makes it perfectly in my opinion. I know that forgoing lunch with my sweetheart just to have a bowl of chili the way I want is pretty silly, but doing anything else would not take care of me today.
I need the comfort that some boundaries bring. Knowing that Tuesday’s I have chili for lunch feels good. It is a stable touchstone that I can count on each week. The rest of the days I eat at a variety of places, but Tuesday is chili day.
It is difficult to express these feelings and reasons even to my wife, even though she assures me that I am more normal that I believe. I am even finding it very difficult to put it into words here and now. However, I know expressing this, even poorly, is vital to my continued growth.
Finally I am truly blessed to share my life with Michele. She not only understands that I am like this, she is okay when my need for consistency impinges on our activities. I think it impinges less today than ever before, and as long as I can talk about it with her its hold over me will continue to diminish.
My earlier posting about feeling ADD seems to have opened the door to feeling depressed. I am spiraling down right now. I feel tired and listless, my focus is completely shot. I am having one problem after another here at work with my assigned tasks. Each problem feels like someone else is responsible, at least I want to make someone else accountable for fixing it.
I want to ignore all of this until the stress of it is gone. If I had my Palm here today I would retreat into reading the book loaded on it rather than working. I want to escape and not have to be adult and responsible. I am tired of every single day having to be responsible. I want to be care free. I want to do nothing and everything all at once. I want to spend money and buy all the large ticket items we want. I want to go home and just sleep and sleep. I am so tired right now. So drained and spent. What is the point of all this?
I know that I am here to learn and growth. I know that the essence that is me decided on the major events of this lifetime so that I would have opportunities to grow. So why am I stuck with all this meaningless bullshit here at work? Who cares about this application we are developing? In a few years I hope to move on to another job in another place. Why am I so driven to suffer through this here and now? What life lesson does coding object oriented applications hold? That I am a masochist?
I am so tired of it all.