Showing posts with label The J.O.B.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The J.O.B.. Show all posts

Thursday, April 29, 2010

bound by yet another human construct? or freed?

It's easy to become distracted and, once ensnared, hard to break away. I heard it articulated last night thusly: Sin is like a comfortable bed: easy to get into but hard to get out of. I'm not equating distraction with sin-- only comparing.

I find myself distracted. I wasn't the moment I walked in this morning; there was work to do and a firm deadline of 10:30am. So I knuckled down and got it done. Ahead of schedule.

But now I find myself distracted... I'm here, aren't I? That's right. I'm here wasting time when there are 3 other looming deadlines on the desk as I speak. But, since I'm already here, let's consider my deadlines.

Between each momentary "now" and each of my multiple deadlines is an ever shrinking value called time. For those of you who followed Farscape and enjoyed the finale, The Peacekeeper Wars, a bit of dialog...

Einstein:      Time...
Crichton:      ...Flies
Einstein:      Time...
Crichton:      ...Bandits
Einstein:      Time...
Crichton:      ...Wounds all heels
Einstein:      Time...
Crichton:      ...Rosemary and
Einstein:      Time...
Crichton:      ...Time ends.


The point being? Time ends. Deadlines come and nothing you do can halt its approach. Like that last line from 'Dust in the Wind'... "And all your money won't another minute buy..."

While I'm wasting time, my deadlines cometh. Welcome or not, they approach. The sands slip through the hourglass.

Another movie quote: from The Matrix...

"Do you hear that Mister Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability."


So there you have it. Each moment I spend here, distracted from those things that must get done, is lost. This means I will have to work doubly hard to get my tasks done, which makes me a slave to time. We all are. Our lives are ordered by time.

But time is a construct, right? A human construct? Can't we just tell time to go away? That we refuse to play its game a moment longer? Ahhh! Not a moment longer? Even our tongues speak the truth of our serfdom to the rule of time-- a construct no longer but, as Agent Smith declares, an inevitability. We are born, live our lives-- for the most part --obliviously or semi-aware of the cost of our daily and momentary choices. But there is hope, albeit emaciated...

From Fyodor Dostoevsky's, The Possessed...

"You've started believing in the future eternal life?"

"No, not future eternal, but here eternal. There are moments, you reach moments, and time suddenly stops, and will be eternal."

"You hope to reach such a moment?"

"Yes."

"It's hardly possible in our time," Nikolai Vsevolodovich responded, also without any irony, slowly and as if thoughtfully. "In the Apocalypse the angel swears that time will be no more."

"I know. It's quite correct there; clear and precise. When all mankind attains happiness, time will be no more, because there's no need. A very correct thought."

"And where are they going to hide it?"

"Nowhere. Time isn't an object, it's an idea. It will die out in the mind."

--- Kirillov to Stavrogin


It will die out in the mind.... so very true! But, in the mean time, the sands slip through the glass, moments die; perhaps consumed by voracious langoliers.

Stavrogin hopes to reach a moment where time suddenly stops. I wish to hope for the same. Perhaps even turn the hands back a decade or two. But I'd settle for keeping the hands at 11:14am on this day of April 29, 2010 for a week or two... allow myself some breathing room, and time to catch up.

But time is an enemy to everyone. Because we know what it has in it's nasty pocketses.

Ha! To think some one could actually have a door in its pocket.

Who would we call such a one but Death?

Thursday, March 11, 2010

log jam clEared

Big weight lifted today. Made some headway with the Politics Page I'm building for the station. I'll be glad when this thing is finished. All I have left to do are the center column content sections: Issues & Amendments, The Candidates, Districts, and Election Night. The templates are built, it's just a matter of populating the pages with content. I have til 5pm next Friday.

Were I a drinking man, I'd celebrate somewhere immediately after work. As it is, however, I'll kick back with a quart jar of ice cold water... at the house.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

midwEek brain dump

When will I learn my lesson? Caffeine, bad! I have a splitting headache all because I love that damned raspberry tea at Sonic. I'll pull in of a morning just to get the Route 44 version... nothing else. I know caffeine is bad, but do I stop drinking tea? no. I know high-fructose corn syrup is uber bad, but do I stop drinking sodas? not entirely. I guess I'll have to end up with a brain tumor before I actually say goodbye for good.

The headache is not as bad as it could be. I've had the kind that leaves you drooling on the pillow, and your eyes throbbing with each beat of your heart. Those are scary headaches. I'm paying for it today, but thankfully I'm only getting the happy meal version. Here's my headache poem...

The Rhythm of Pain

Despondency danced a bitter turn
Each step attuned to the rhythm of pain
And ague ~ Oh, what an insistent pill
A tyranny desirous of a last resort
Where pain is safely put to bed
Clubbed mercilessly and staining the sheet
One pill ~ One retreat and saving grace
And despondency cleansed and senseless in the surf


ELAshley
062006.063721.6
75 minutes of brain-cramping toil
...and a migraine in the wings

More poetry can be found at the Muslin Opaque

* * *



I'm building a 2010 politics page for the station. Regional stuff primarily. I hate having to go through the station's "Clickability" platform. I'd prefer to just build it the way I want it to look, but now it's becoming increasingly clear that I'll have no choice but to use Clickability.

For what it's designed to do, it does make things a lot simpler, but it doesn't allow for any real creativity within a company standards paradigm.

Here's the banner I built for the page. Click on the image to see it full size.










* * *



Lunch tomorrow with my lunch buddy. Assuming, of course, nothing comes up. I've been unlucky of late getting her to a restaurant.

I saw her at the "Spotlight on Business" expo at the Civic Center yesterday afternoon. She's as beautiful as ever.

I have no doubt she'll be just as beautiful tomorrow.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

e's wEekly brain dump

It's been an interesting week... really.
  • New Internet Sales boss
  • My job is changing. Everything's in limbo
  • Pursuant to previous: More responsibility. More learning. Potential for more money
  • Lunch buddy asked me to join her at the station's tent at the Peanut Festival
  • MONSTER headache this weekend... even as I write this
  • Epiphany of sorts regarding the world today


I learned rather early in the week that my job is changing and I had to make a decision as to whether I wanted to ride the wave or stay on shore. The station wants someone to become their Web Guru... an veritable internet Jedi... and they're asking me. It'll be a lot more work without any initial pay increase-- which is par for the course, but in the long run it'll set me up for a potentially very large return. I am in a very enviable position.

I now have to immerse myself into WorldNow, a video editor/client program I've never gone into more than waist deep. I'm already conversant with Clickability so there's no big deal there, but now I have to add Adobe Flash to the mix, a program I know almost nothing about-- Hey, I've never had to use it! In addition I'll be using Dream Weaver more than I already do... again not a big deal. And I'll be using a lot more HTML (the new Internet Sales manager tells me I won't need CSS at all, that the use of CSS is passe, and on its way out. I thoroughly disagree, but in terms of my new duties [of which I'm still in the dark] I'll not need it. Doesn't mean I'm going to just toss it out the window. I'm going to master CSS if it kills me).

From what I understand, I'll be shooting video and placing it on the station's website. This doesn't impress me as a very big deal except that I've never soloed on a video shoot; my training in that has been deliberately slow. So I expect my training there will intensify.

And just where all the landmarks/mines are, I cannot even hazard a guess. You see, I'm the kind of person that likes to know where everyone stands: what are their duties, to whom do I answer (since technically I'm in two departments), in what situation. I don't like "on the job" surprises. Knowing the lay of the land is the first step toward victory, barring the ability to choose your own ground. And right now, where I marshal my forces... from what position I engage... is not my decision. Someone else is choosing the ground for me. Not an enviable position to be in, I assure you. Over all, however, this is an opportunity that I would be a fool not to take.

I don't like change; Change is unpredictable, no matter how much information one possesses-- something can always go wrong. And yet Change is the only real constant there is outside of God himself.

That has been my life for much of this week-- Flux.


* * *

I shared another enjoyable hour with my lunch buddy on Friday. She is a great conversationalist! I can't even remember all things we talked about, but I do know I was yet again a Chatty Cathy, which is so not like me. I am typically the most reserved person in ANY group or gathering, and yet she is very freeing... not so much in what she does, but rather what she projects. As Luka Bloom sings in Primavera,

You are a beacon in the crowd
You bring lavender to calm"

...and as I typically catalog relationships through music I would assign Primavera to Miss LeNee`.

On another note, she added me to her list of friends on MySpace, and she sent me one of these electronic 'Kisses'; it's some kind of app that allows for flirting or some such, Needless to say, I sent one back, but then realized that might not have been the best thing. I swear I am not trying to get intimate with her. I just can't do that right now. So I'm choosing-- and rightly so, I think --to take it with a grain of salt. Thousands of people blow those kisses around on MySpace, and as I recently wrote, I know the difference between intrigue and infatuation, or in this case, the difference between flirty friendship and an honest to goodness kiss.

A "Kiss" is two pair of lips embracing the soul of one fleeting moment. This was just an electronic image on my computer screen. [got to remember that... really good metaphor]. I sent her a link to a poem I wrote... One Kiss.

In addition to this, she asked me while at lunch if I would sign up and join her the Saturday of the Peanut Festival Parade out at the fairgrounds at the station's tent and keep her company while she smoozes with the public. I'd love to do that, but I'm deliberately delaying any decision. I have my word to consider... the part where I said I could not date because of my current situation. And while I have no illusion that this would be a date, I worry that I may be becoming too attached to a daydream-- she is THAT powerful of a presence to me --and I still have obligations elsewhere. No... there's no ring on my finger, but I'm not free in any case. I've made promises, and I'm not in the business of breaking promises no matter how attractive the light she exudes.


* * *

Eric P. it seems will still be training me on the cameras. And I've already discussed the whys and wherefores. In addition, however, I will be training him to cover for me when I take vacations.

Sidebar: Primavera just ended, and the shuffle has brought about Fleetwood Mac's Sara...
another powerfully beautiful song.


Eric P, by the way, is another person I am choosing as friend. I have been too long without friends.


* * *

The more I look at the world today the more I can't help but see God's hand in the each day's events. It's as though I can see the pen in His hand; the flow of ink following a line of script written long ago, yet played out in real-time before my eyes. How the world can go about building its plans, its own 21st century Tower of Babel is beyond me. All I can say is the world is overwhelmingly ignorant to the truth. Imagine how wonderful it would be to witness the fulfillment of prophecy... and yet billions of people have failed to see the truth that they ARE witnessing the fulfillment of scripture today; that prophecy is in the process of being fulfilled.

Absolutely amazing.

All my troubles and elations this week pale before that one simple truth. Should the world still be tooling along twenty years from now, all the training I'm about to receive may actually be a benefit to me... the friendships I'm building today may actually bear fruit. I may actually find that woman who will put a ring on my finger. I may actually...

Well... Nothing wrong with dreaming, with hoping for changes in my life. But let's not lose sight of what's really important. And depending on what one values most, what's truly important is either held aloft like a crown of laurels, or left behind somewhere in the dust of our travails. For myself, I have visions of a finish line.

In the meantime I'm going to bed with a headache one-inch larger in circumference than my skull, with nothing but water to ease the pain.

Hey! you know me! I haven't had any medications of ANY sort in ages. They are stictly verbotten! Besides, my body does not have a deficiency in Acetaminophen, or Aspirin. Know the cause... know the cure.

So what cause this tremendous headache? I drank something with aspartame early yesterday morning. Now I'm paying for it. Time and lots of Ionized water will take care of it. What? You never get headaches from drink you diet colas? Perhaps that's because you drink them regularly. Think a caffeine headache is bad? Just try coming off Aspartame. No amount of Tylenol or Aspirin will kill that headache. I know all too well.


 
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