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6 February 2002 (Wednesday): question marks

Mood has shifted toward the introspective and doubtful, in most of the online journals I read. What is it here for? I see them thinking. What am I doing? What is truth, worth, life, love? Funny that they're all sort of doing it at the same time. Well...I wouldn't read them if their authors didn't visit these subjects at least somewhat frequently, but they seem to have zeroed in on it lately with uncanny synchronicity.

Lenny and I took a two-hour lunch break today to go costume shopping. Our project team is slated to present a demo of our work at the company meeting on Friday, and after a merry brainstorming session the team decided on a Greek hero-myth approach. Well, technically Roman: the project code name is Neptune, so we ran with it from there. They picked me to draft the script. My manager will be the hapless customer, the damsel-in-distress as it were, and we've recruited the most diffident, stuttery-shy person in the group to play the hero. Our QA engineer will play the wine-swilling villain, and the rest of us make up the pantheon of gods and goddesses who come to the hero's aid (each by demonstrating one feature of the product, of course). It's all exceedingly silly. Anyway, Lenny knows a good costume shop in his part of town, so we drove there during lunch and picked out everything we needed. As Neptune, he'll be walking out in front of the crowd of staid employees in shimmery green merman pants. I'll be wearing a tunic dress and a floppy helmet-hat. We got olive branches for everyone to stick in their hair, and I'll be making oversize name tags just for good measure. Hello, My Name Is VULCAN.

Sometimes my job ain't so bad.

But I do wonder what I'm doing here, too. What it's all for. When the goofy pointless aspects of work are the only rewarding ones, that must mean it's time to move on, right? I could quit. I just don't know what I would do next. My other job is more interesting, and it's starting to pay decently, but I can't meet the rent on that alone. It's still basically a lucrative hobby.

I think I need to go swimming in a river again. Clear my head, figure out what I want. I wonder what the other journal writers are doing to sort through their own questions.

posted by enjelani @ 03:22 AM PST