Inspection Expectation

Once again, I fail at game theory. I really need to start studying it, because this would help me avoid sitting outside an inspections bay at 7:00 A.M. with no one behind me, and probably no one behind me at all when the bay opens at 7:30 A.M.

I wanted to try to get here to be first in line, so I could get to work not much later after 8:30 A.M. Since I sat around with nothing to do, I figure I would just drive up and sit. However, after 10 minutes, still the only person in line. I wish I was not swayed by the last Saturday I drove up, when four cars were waiting. To be fair, the bay probably has multiple garages, allow for multiple simultaneous inspections, but the signs imply there is only one inspector.

This is part of my reliance on vehicles. It's roughly ten miles to work now. If I were to receive a bicycle from a random source, would it be feasible to bike there and back? If there were a shower, I'd rush that down like a fighting game champion.

What about running to work? Lot of training required, and not something I could do both ways in a day, or more than a few times a week.

I'm still a fan of the point-to-point catapult system. Pay your $20, strap some padding on, and launch to waypoint. Unfortunately, any catapult strong enough to hop me to LockMart would also likely constitute a blight upon the landscape.

I suppose flying might be an option, except first I would have to drive to Dulles International Airport, then fly out of Dulles International, fly into Dulles International, and drive to work. Somehow counterproductive, again. Not quite what I intended.

7:20, still no one behind me. Better safe than sorry, but better rested than safe.

***

I've been toying with getting inked. Nothing elaborate, just a lower-case X on my left shoulder, toner-black, Times New Roman, 12 point font. It would be pretty small, and from a distance, might even resemble a birthmark or other identifying market. But it wouldn't be one of those meaningless tattoos that people get.

So the joke goes, do you see people in Asian countries get tattoos of random words in English, since people in America get random Chinese words tattooed on their bodies? I could be a semi-punch line, and at least I would know what the damn thing stood for (the 24th letter of the alphabet).

I sign my name on occasion with an X where my middle initial would go. As my cousin A.L. told me all those years ago, X stands for "no middle name."

X is the unknown.

X marks the spot, here there be pirate booty. Though mine doesn't quite rise to the level of pirate booty, I'd like to think the junk I carry in my trunk is not a bad substitute.

X fits into so many of my favorite words. Exasperate. Exit. Excellent. Exactly. Exacting. Annex. Extemporaneous. Ax. Axe. Exult. Exalt. Maximum.

I'm a fan of the lower-case letters. None of the excessive capitalization that German touts.

X is a simple design, two line segments intersecting at the midpoint.

X is also a universal design. We all call it different names, but we are all familiar with it.

You can form an X with your forearms. You can form an X with your legs. You can form an X anywhere.

I probably won't get it, but it's something to toy with if I have too much time on my hands.

Speak, and Ye Shall Be Healed

Strange that I think words are impotent, especially now, because one of my life's goals is to speak at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park (London, England). At this point, it would likely be a "day trip." Fly in to Heathrow Airport, get directions to Hyde Park, walk or catch a cab (a lorry? Hugh Laurie?), give the speech, probably record it on a tape recorder in my pocket, rush back to Heathrow, fly back stateside.

Why do I want to do this? I don't really know. Wanderlust factors in. So does anglophilia. But I hate public speaking. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I would have rather (and metaphorically have) died than speak to groups greater than one.

And yet, there's something historic about Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. Granted, my sophomoric rantings wouldn't compare to the classic speeches given there, but they would be my rantings. I would be all alone, no support. In the past, I have shined in those all-too-rare instances where I stood alone against "the mob." Even more, it would symbolize my growth, my ability to break out beyond the narrow margins my youth and childhood charted about me.

I have never spoken in front of others without some sort of prodding. But the few speeches I have given turned out gangbusters. The last time I spoke in public, my hands shook so hard they went numb, turned a pale blue. At the same time, several strangers commented favorably, stating it was the greatest wedding speech they'd ever heard.

Do i expect everything to fall together like a game of Tetris, eliminating blocks left and right, if I go to Speaker's Corner? No. But maybe, just maybe, I can forget this painful shyness that plagues me, even for a few scant moments.

Don't even ask what I would talk about. Once I purchase the ticket, I'll decide, but not until then. To be fair, though I've toyed with a lot of topics, one that I keep coming back to is love. Why? Damned if I know.

For Being a Wordy Bastard...

I've lately been pondering just how weak words actually are. A bit sad, and mildly sobering, for a man plying his trade and spending his leisure with words. But when you really start thinking (as with a sustained analysis of anything), you come to the realization that words are at best a clumsy simulacrum representing the ideas underlying them. At worst, they are little more than guttural grunts.

My strength in writing, if you can call it that, is crazy imagery and original similes/metaphors, fueled by an ever-ticking imagination, always five seconds from explosion. My weaknesses are the words, and the inability to finish longer stories. We'll concentrate on the words right now.

Saturday morning, I had to drive at 7:30 A.M. Apparently, I was traveling eastward, for the silken sunlight draped over my car, engulfing me in a golden fleeced blindness. Just as Jason lulled the ram to sleep, so too did I find myself blinded and drifting off.

Now, I experienced the sunrise. It is no different from sunset, save being in reverse. I think that people only say you should watch a sunrise because it's more the effect of waking up while it's still quiet, and being alone, isolated, in your thoughts. If we lived in the 17th century, no one would tell you to watch a sunrise. you'd be up with the sun anyway, and too busy to have to deal with such romantic nonsense. (Standard disclaimer: I still love sunrises.) And, as usual, I digress.

My conveyance to you of the sunrise rings imperfect. There is no way, short of merging with you, casual reader, heart and soul, that I can properly set to words the sunscape. And this isn't limited to nature. Science, math, business processes, all of these I fail, for my words also fail them. There is no justice. There is just ice.

Part of this is the degradation of my vocabulary from my halcyon college days, when I could spin phrases in casual conversation that would send people to the dictionaries to look for the definition. Keep in mind I have higher standards for my own speaking abilities than what I expect from others, but I do not live up to those standards in everyday conversation anymore. You've heard me speak, if you're reading this. I sound like a buffoon, and my word choice is that of a lobotomized chimpanzee. The words fail me, and I fail the words.

Hearty Travel

(Written on March 20)

Rush hour, what a misnomer. You go nowhere fast. You also really can't avoid it if you work a nine-to-five. Today I was forced to come late, due to an all-day meeting scheduled from 9:30 to 5:30. Tomorrow is a redux. Thus, I may have to continue rising before the cock crows, if cocks crow in Virginia. Heaven only knows who I will have to deny thrice.

It is disorienting just how adaptable the human condition truly is. I moved from MD to VA for convenience. Before then, if I needed to, I could have driven 2.5-3.5 hours a day. Yes, it was a miserable coil of misery wrapped around a bar of despair, and a horrid current of shock jolted throughout, inducing pain. Yes, I've butchered that electromagnetic metaphor, what a shock to the system.

Side note: I'm sitting in Wendy's eating dinner, and a facial dead ringer for Super Bowl MVP Peyton Manning just drove up in an Iowa-registered Chevy Cavalier. Beyond that, I know it is not Peyton because he rode his offense everywhere in the playoffs, not a Chevy. (This is our country....)

I also don't know how it happened, but traffic just now mysteriously lightened. Seven ticked by on my watch, and the rush hour just lifted. Inexplicable.

Peyton-two has just seated himself across from me, likely to watch his car, parked next to mine. I somehow feel inadequate just being so near a man that marginally resembles American royalty.

And it's strange how that works, isn't it? Britain has their royal family, America tolerates Hollyweird. We laud gridiron football, while the rest of the world follows the Champions' league. GW meddles in Iraq for oil, and the rest of the world just shakes their head.

Is America so contrarian because of its roots? It takes a certain brand of person to up and travel off for several weeks to the unknown frontier. It's hard for me to envision, since I can fly to anywhere on the planet within a day. I guess the modern equivalent would be tripping the light fantastic to Alpha Centauri at relativistic speeds.

Hell, you would really be leaving everything. Mail could take months to reach the "New World." Gunning it to Alpha-C would separate you from your loved ones. You really would fall out of synchronization with Earth. Several months for you, years for them. From the terran baseline, it would be time travel, and they would bid you fare well, but would your trip be that well-fared?

What kinds of people would make that trip willingly, assuming we possessed the arcane technologies required (and also assuming that any technology sufficiently advanced will appear magical)? What people would the authorities willingly send on such a lonesome travail? And the crazy thing? They would probably survive, maybe even thrive. Sure, their world might be morbidly different, and they would have to make a wealth of concessions, but barring catastrophe, those stolid survivors would find a way.

Side note: How worthless was that last statement? I think it may be a side effect of L-school, forcing me to couch my statements in generalities so as to render them correct, even if they become worthless and devoid of meaning. Here, I use render in the fashion of rendering pork lard, if only because I feel greasy after L-school. I make these worthless statements a lot, or I'm more conscious of it now. Either way, damn your black soul L-school.

The point is that I have finally traveled just far enough in my life to be without a readily-accessible support net. It is a planned venture to visit people in MD, a significant effort and expenditure of time and energy. There had better be a damned good reason to get me and the Lady Surfer up there.

I am not on my own. I will never be on my own. The people that matter, I carry them in my heart whereever I go. When I hug them, it leaves a little indent on my heart. These worn creases actually hold the damned thing together. Even in my darkest moments (L-school), when it felt like I was alone and abandoned, deep down, their love kept me going. I only now have the emotional distance to accept this. Back then, it was just walking down a dark corridor with no light at the end, walking because I had to trust others could see what I couldn't.

I still wonder if they saw a mirage.

Most of them are now at least 45 minutes away. However, they are still right beside me, within me, part of me, bridging that gap in the span of a heart beat. I've moved to VA, but have not evicted them from my heart.

I'm sure when I reread this, the diabetes will require an insulin shot or three. Also, Vanilla Sky ruined "Good Vibrations" for me. Every time I hear it, like now, it fills me with caution and fear. What a screwed-up movie. "Tech support!"

A Time to Laugh

I like to think there is humor in every situation, though it could just be that I am trying to what is not there. Chasing phantoms wearing goofy teeth. This may also be why I don't tell people I have a Juris Doctorate (among many other reasons). After a couple of months (and really not wanting to have to cart it around with me when I moved to Virginia), I finally took my bar admission certificate to LockMart. (Oh, i've decided to ease up on the complete anonymity and plausible deniability. I'm not that important, and really it just gets frustrating after a while. The words are supposed to work for me, not the other way around.) Granted, I also took two Nerf revolver handguns (Mavericks, not Gooses). It is amazing how alluring Nerf weaponry is to the IT field.

People come in, look at the guns, talk for a bit, then see the cert. Their eyes bulge as they read the tiny script, and ignorance dusks, falls dim. I sit and wait. They star, not comprehending. What does it mean? I'll tell you what it means: I'm a lawyer.

The looks are classic.

Then the questions roll on in. Why are you a lawyer? It sucks. What are you doing here? Change of pace. Are you insane? Do you want me to be?

I will grant this, there have been two times in my life now where I felt the Juris Doctorate actually might come in handy. One is for the humor/shock factor. People just don't expect it.

***

As you may or may not know, I'm in the process of becoming a Virginian. The two-and-a-half to
four hours of commute time a day just got the better of me. Now, today, I've spent that time writing, and feel so much better about life, even if I'm still sick and the whole Virginian conversion seems pretty daunting. [Ed. Note: I wrote this longhand the Monday after I moved. It turns out I now have allergy-induced asthma in the spring and the fall. -K] But if J.R. can do it, and if J.L. can do it, then I can do it. (Not to say that I can do everything those two have done. Hell, there are probably very few things they can do I can also. Just that if they could persevere, so can I, I think.)

On average, I was spending fifteen hours a week commuting. Almost two-thirds of a day every week. During the peak, one week I spent eighteen hours in a car. A vehicular vagabond, really. Eighty miles a day, four hundred miles a week. I've been commuting since October. About sixteen hundred miles a month. Roughly eight thousand miles in all, or two oil changes, and a third due very soon.

Now that I've moved, the commute on day one totaled less than an hour. Plus, the Lady Surfer is doing much better. She was starting to squeal at 65 miles per hour. Now, I can limit her to much less driving. Twenty to twenty-five miles per day with luck. Stretch a few more years out of her. [Ed. note - Turned out the Lady Surfer just had a run-down brake pad. No surprise, what with the amount of stop and go traffic I had to put her through. I'm so sorry, Lady. -K]

Not that I won't miss the ridiculous amounts of alone time, me and a million other workers, isolated and completely alone in our own little worlds. [Ed. Note - I found out the hard way that you're really not alone, but that's a story for another day. -K] Time to day dream and envision storylines. But now, I can do that in an apartment, and not be exhausted. Now, I feel rejuvenated. It's also kind of nice not having regular internet access or cable television. Living a stripped down, spartan lifestyle. If they weren't necessary evils, I might end up living without them. At least I got the Playstation 2 and a stack of DVDs. [Ed. Note - As you can tell by this posting, I did end up getting the goods. However, and I'm kind of proud of this, I've been taking care of business for the past few hours without having the television on in the background. Slowly stripping away the extraneous, left with the essentials. Boy, I've got to work on that concept. -K]

Movies

Well, not really. I use the term as I would "drinkies" or "eaties." For example, "Gonna have good drinkies later." "Nice long sleepies tonight."

Hopefully, I'll have good movies this weekend. Also, don't know if/when I'm going to order cable internets, so I'll be limited to internets at work, and I'm definitely not going to spend work time answering emails. So, consider this my vacation from cyberspace, unintended as it is.

Digital House Fire

I lost my hard drive on Saturday night. Fare thee well, Prism, fare thee well.

Having slowly but surely shed my reliance on technology, for the most part, my losses were minimal. I had backups on my thumb drive of a few pictures and five text files, which were the most important of my writings. Had I lost those, there would be much gnashing and wailing of teeth. The remainder of the lost information was just music, random pictures, random documents, and my out-of-date resume. They were the powdered milk, and can be reconstituted fairly easily. The thumb drive backups, those are the powdered water: just add water.

If you don't get it, don't worry. I don't either. It's been a long weekend.

For a few minutes, I felt like my house had burned down. The ratcheting and grinding from within my computer, the error message/Blue Screen of Death, that i was able to make it work for a little while by flipping the entire laptop on it's side, but not to the point where I could salvage the information. That was it. My digital life, gone not in a poof of smoke, but a burst gear.

It's silly, I know, the peculiar chill I felt, as I sat there, put my arms around myself, and wondered what I was going to do. Everyone I care about is OK. I had my health, and all my stuff was intact. I even had an old hard drive (which I re-christened Faith once I got it working in this laptop). All that was lost were ones and zeroes, and we all know how much I love numbers. And yet, somehow, like a prism, our lives have splintered; we possess so many facets to our lives now. Our online life. Our offline life. Our personal life. Our public life. Our family life. Our social life. Our leisure life. Our work life. Our sleep... You get the idea.

It isn't as if I lost my digital persona. But on some level, I lost the digital representation of myself. And the infamous cyber-luddite, much as he doesn't want to be defined with narrow concepts, cannot deny this part of himself. It hurts just enough that denial only makes it worse. And I'm not really changed by this. It took less than a day to get Faith up and running. But still.

Good gracious I'm tiring and rambly. Maybe when I can get some distance I'll discuss what else happened. Yes, and then I'll touch the light, as if it were a coherent item, tangible and frangible and audible and all sorts of other lies. Boy I need to sleep.

The Runup to the Rundown, Part 5

The decision was made for me, as so many others have been. I just had to accept it, and that day of acceptance was when I drove seven hours over two days in winter traffic, solely commuting to and from work. The act of submitting an application was not painful. Indeed, in keeping in line with my casual nature, it was the only place I applied to, or visited, but it was also pretty impressive (i.e. it did not require taking interstate four-ninety-five to get to work). Also an expensive pho restaurant nearby, which is better than nothing, I suppose.

Wednesday of that week, I needed to take in some papers to complete the application process. I decided to take them during my lunch break, and to drive on the toll road. Now, because of the age of my car (almost ten years), plus all the salt and snow on the ground, the exhaust mid pipe on my car had rusted through, to the point where one part of it fell off, creating a horrific grinding sound. This at sixty miles an hour freaked me out. I got to the apartment complex as quick as I could, then called for a towing company. Yes, I could have driven, but with those sounds, and the strong possibility I was trailing sparks, why should I have risked it?

The car was fixed just fine. My wallet gently weeps, but the car is fine again. I even returned to work that night, only five hours later, to put in an hour so I could work a nine hour day the next day, instead of a ten hour day. That more or less brings us up to date work wise.

Yesterday, I talked with a friend of Aunt K.C., W.X. It was a nice dinner at the R.S., though I wish I’d not ordered the oysters. Why didn’t I go for the crabcakes? When in doubt, get the crabcakes! The talk was enlightening, and further affirmed my conjoined twin desire to pursue a doctorate of philosophy in literature (or a masters of fine arts in creative writing) and publish a novel (or at least get a short story published nationally). This leads us to today, which has been inundated with me writing, aside from two short breaks, one to take a run, the other to drive for an hour and a half. This is how far I’ve gone off the deep end, that my day wasn’t complete until I went and drove for an hour and a half and just thought about stuff. Like restarting the blog, and people.

Is this going to be a regular thing, again? Probably not. Definitely not for a while, as the move is upcoming. However, shit is starting to happen in my life again. I’m starting to forge a new path, take new chances, do new things, meet new people. Unlike the past three-and-a-half insular years, focused on surviving law school, now I can work on thriving in this personal space of my own making. The story I was working on this morning, oh Lord it felt so right. I hope it reads as well as I thought it did when I applied pen to paper. I think it’s got legs, and once I get it typed and edited, might post some parts of it. Short story length, definitely. Novella, possibly. Novel? Well, we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?

The Runup to the Rundown, Part 4

That Monday was chock full of snowy goodness, as well as a hellacious commute in on Interstate four-ninety-five. For those of you not in on the cosmic joke, that road is a trail that passes through the most congested parts of hell. The driving has given me plenty of time to think about what I will write about later and daydream, but it has also driven (haha) me to take steps to move down to Virginia, just so I will have time to myself not in a car.

When I arrived, half the staff had called out, the roads were so bad. I rang the front door, and D.S., who did not know me, said that he could not let me in, and I should wait until someone that did know me let me in. I waited a poor forty-five minutes in the lobby before I.S. came to get me. That was when I first learned about the core hours of ten until four.

The first couple of days were fairly slow, just getting the workspace set up and learning to play with one of the systems. Then, Wednesday, I got a task. Help desk script. Woo. Busted that out, nervous as all hell, but it was a good start, nothing too complex. I.S. said it was good work. I felt buoyed. I was ready for the next task.

The next week, on Thursday, it dropped right into my lap. They stuck me on the new contract at four in the afternoon, and I learned about the horrors of all day meetings on Friday. I want to word this carefully, as I’ve obtained a security clearance that disallows me from talking about the specifics, but I hate all day meetings. I think I can state that without contravening the requirements of the clearance. All day meetings are all day wastes of time (yes J.R. you were right). I want to rise up out of my chair and start screaming every time we have an all day meeting. They’re bad enough that every Thursday, when we have one, I long for the days of N.C.I., partly because I miss the voice writing crew, and partly because I could get work done.

Yes, I could just consider the possibility that I’m getting paid for this time, and so should suck it up, but if my life were all roses and candy, what would be the point of me living it? It’s not the ease with which we identify in literature, it’s the struggle. The grinding edges (thank you M.O.) of society. It’s through the pain, and how we react, that shapes us, makes our lives, our stories, interesting. And so, for now, since I have no real pain to speak of, I suffer with these all day meetings.

It turns out that I am not the only one that thinks I will return to N.C.I. They have yet to delete my information from the network, should I decide to return. Oh, I want to, but I cannot, for I have decided to move down to VA, and cannot subsist on the N.C.I. salary if I do so.

The Runup to the Rundown, Part 3

Called up my mom after lunch to tell her the good news.

K.T.: Mom, I got the job.
B.T.: That’s great, what’s the company?
K.T.: L.M.
B.T.: Oh.
[PAUSE]
B.T.: Spell that?
[K.T. STARTS SPELLING]
B.T.: Wait, what?
[K.T. CONTINUES SPELLING]
B.T.: Oh, OK, I can ask coworkers about it.
How much do you make?
K.T.: X.
B.T.: Oh, that’s wonderful!

Five minutes later, she calls back.

B.T.: K.T., that’s wonderful, L.M. is a good company, everyone has heard about it.
I thought you were working in a tiny place.

That’s my mom.

I wore my button down shirt and jeans in to work. This immediately made everyone suspicious. E.N. asked me if I had known not to wear what I wore into the interview, thank you for having so little faith in my abilities. I told her, J.R., Z.M., and A.M. the news. Most people, whether they meant it or not, tendered congratulations. J.R., however, had written technically in the past. Her warnings and words of wisdom have not gone unheeded. For the most part, her predictions were correct. I just didn’t have that many choices. She also stated several times that maybe I wouldn’t like it and I would return to N.C.I. If it were feasible, I’d do so. Oh, would I ever.

The last few weeks played out with them putting me on emergency live captioning and transcribing soap operas until letters squeezed their way out of my nostrils. Also fond farewells from good people, and promises to keep in touch. On my final weeks, I even volunteered for treat duty and baked some rice krispie squares at seven in the morning. This was so disorienting to A.W., he actually wondered whether I was baking, or he was developing a brain tumor.

The weirdest thing about saying goodbye, aside from having to do so, and that I still visit every other week to say hello and waste their time, is that we all work on different shifts. In effect, this drew out my farewell over three days. Wednesday’s set of farewells were the first, and since my week wasn’t over, didn’t feel real. Friday’s, I was just anxious to get out and get out now, because, like an idiot, I’d decided to start work the following Monday, and needed to get acclimated to my new nine to five schedule immediately. Thursday’s was the worst, as that was pretty much the only day where it really felt like I was saying goodbye.

The Runup to the Rundown, Part 2

Strangely, L.M. was, is, only five minutes from N.C.I. I arrived oh-so-early, sat and waited, but I.S. decided to start the meeting half an hour early since I was there. While I was waiting, I watched people entering the office proper, and noticed the receptionist standing before a plate on the wall and having her retinas scanned. Yes, there is a retinal scanner for the front door, and according to everyone in the office, it is a piece of donkey dump. I have yet to get signed up for it, two months later.

We went to the Dugout conference room, so named because there’s some wag baseball fan responsible for naming the conference rooms. I.S. looks at my resume and starts off, “I guess the first question is.” Then he stops and smiles. I stare back at him, his dark hair combed to either side, a smile on his face. I should know this, but I’m so tired that the obvious isn’t coming up. What is it? I’m wracking my brain for several awkward seconds before he finally asks, “Why don’t you want to be a lawyer?” Right, right. I give him automatic answer number four, the tedium and the hours did not appeal to me.

We start talking about my background, before he launches into a series of questions about databases and applications. Some of his questions, I answer intelligently. Some I do not. Some I just have to admit I do not know the answer to. At some point, J.T. joined in, having been told that the meeting was at half past ten, but not being informed we had started early. Most of the questions are just blanks to me, but I do remember the oddest one: If you owned a candy machine, how would you test it to make sure it was working properly? Seeing as how I’ve abused candy machines in the past, I just listed everything I’ve ever done to a candy machine to bend it to my will. Nearly hit every single answer they had.

Thereafter, I met M.M., the head of the department. I did not realize who he was at the time. We talked for another half hour, bringing the total interrogation time up to ninety minutes. Soon after, I met E.B., and we went out to lunch. I was not confident, but he was, as most interviewees did not meet M.M., unless something good was going to happen.

We went to Chili’s, which E.B. despises for the horrid food. I can barely taste mine, it’s like ashes in my mouth. About forty minutes in, I get another phone call from “No Number.” It’s I.S. He wants to offer me a position with X salary. I’m so dumbfounded, I accept on the spot. Really, I should have tried to negotiate, but this meant an out, an actual out, for me from the golden shackles of the legal profession. I had to jump on it. It was a liferaft.

Twenty-three hours had elapsed from talking to E.B. to getting the job.

The Runup to the Rundown, Part 1

When last we checked in with our fearful hero, he was forging a half-assed New Year’s resolution that he thought would take six months to complete. He was captioning television programs and about a month away from doing it live, for real, when it counted. Two months later, he’s entrenched in the world of technical writing. He’s about ready to take a big step and move out on his own, without the aid of a school residential housing system. He’s trying to learn more about people. And he’s still writing, still pursuing his dreams. So, what happened?

Let’s assume I’ll live for seventy-five years, a safe assumption, average life span. The first third of my life ended when I was admitted to the bar on December thirteenth. At what cost this legal training? At least it provided a nice dovetail to my childhood. Now begins phase two of my childhood, or as we like to call it by it’s proper name, “middle-age.”

Middle-aged people have bills to pay. So it was when I decided that I had to make more money, but was not yet ready to give in to the hell of the legal profession. I told myself all throughout the run up to the new year that it was time to get a new job, so I could actually support myself without exhausting my savings, or myself. I’d started to get an idea of what types of jobs I wanted to apply for, when E.B. asked if I wanted to become a technical writer at L.M. He had assumed that me, as a lawyer, would not be interested in plumbing the depths of documentation. What he did not count on was my view that this would be a step up from plumbing the depths of statutes. I e-mailed him my resume and left for work. He later told me that he handed the resume to I.S., the hiring supervisor, who stated something to the effect of “Interesting, this might work out.”

I’d arrived at work for a few hours when I received a phone call, source listed as “No Number.” Peculiar. I answer, and lo and behold, it is I.S., asking me if I can come in for an interview. Like a fool, I say I’m game, what time? He says he is free from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon. Without much thought (I am somewhat shocked), I say half past ten. Now, keep in mind that only three hours have elapsed since I first talked to E.B. January third.

I tell him later what’s going on, and he recommends I learn right quick about what the job required, based on the solicitation. Due to the nature of the division, ratherh than ask fora technical writer, they were forced to solicit for a systems engineer. Yes, a systems engineer. A person that engineers systems. Yes, I’m a systems engineer. For a living.

This takes place around ten at night. A little later, I receive an e-mail that asks if I could fill out several forms and bring them in tomorrow. You know, because things like the actual job application are necessary for application to a job. I figure this would be no big deal. Just fill it out, learn about the systems engineering, get six hours of sleep, get going. Ah, optimistic K.T., how little you realize, you naive fool. Once I finished all that, it was around two in the morning, so six hours wasn’t out of the question. However, I was so nervous that I couldn’t sleep. Not until five in the morning. Scenarios of doom and gloom kept running through my head. By the time I left, I was exhausted, wired, caffeinated, and unable to remember what was going on, or what I had studied.