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Thursday, July 23, 2009

"...I'd let you watch, I would inivte you, but the Queens we use would not excite you..."

The title is from the song "One Night in Bangkok", which is from the musical Chess. It's really just an ABBA song that's just not sung the the ABBA ladies (instead it's sung by Murray Head). Anyway, I love the line. It refers to a guy playing the nerdy game of chess while in the midst of a sex-crazed city. I heard it for the first time in a long while as I was driving back from Hartford yesterday evening.

As noted above, I was traveling this week. Maybe it's just me but when I'm working out of town it's as if my life suddenly collapses into this transparent bubble, with only so many things within reach (inside the bubble), but yet I can see things outside the bubble. I know, that's a difficult analogy to make, but it's the best I can come up with. It's as if my reach were far greater than my grasp. In a lot of ways it has always been that way, although now that my girls are much older (16, soon to be 17 & 21) I have less to worry about on the home front. This is only a partial comfort, as that "worry void" doesn't remain completely void, instead being filled up with the work stuff that only gets more complex each and every year.

Work, a true four letter word.

Maybe I am not alone in this, but I have this "love - hate" relationship with work. Yes, I like getting paid and I'm not one for sitting on my butt anyway, but still there are times when the levels of stress that it produces have been so great that I've felt as if I was going to literally burst into a million pieces. Think the planet as it's getting destroyed by the DeathStar during the first Star Wars movie.

About the closest I've ever come to the explosion thing actually happening occurred this past Tuesday night. I was training all day, it was just a rough, long day. At the time things just didn't seem to be working, I wasn't sure what to do, and the whole situation seemed devoid of any hope. Feeling so depleted, I thought I'd go to the movies, which I did. Sitting the the theater watching "Bruno", all I could think about was the seeming pickle I was in at work. No hope what so ever. Needless to say I didn't enjoy the movie, but then again I just don't think that the movie was all that entertaining (it was very funny in spots, exceptionally difficult to watch in others) to begin with. Making matters worse, I got lost going home...something about not being familiar with that part of Hartford, the dark, and the rainstorm. For some strange reason though, just as I was finding my way back to the hotel (by just driving in what I thought was the right direction and looking for landmarks), I seemed to gain a little better perspective on the whole work thing. It was a strange juxtaposition of getting physically and mentally lost I suppose. By the time I found the hotel I found inside my head something of a plan to begin dealing the the stickier elements of what was happening in the office.

I know, the above reads like something you'd find in a bad motivational book, but I swear it's the truth.

Anyway, yesterday's training went well and I have inside my head at least some thoughts on how my work on this particular project will proceed. I'll get by.

Now it's back to the grind in a slightly larger bubble.

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