yeah it's all epistolary today... a letter written to an old friend who asked how was i doing.
as for how i'm doing… it's a mixed bag. having money ultimately gives you more choices in life, but one's day-to-day experience of living is no better and no worse than it was when i was broke. it's just a different set of problems, arguably more complex and irritating ones. i think the idea is that when you have money, you are to pay other people to deal w/ your problems (heh, like a shrink! though i was thinking more of lawyers and those people you can hire in nyc to do anything for you). i feel like my life consists entirely of calling 1-800 numbers and filling out forms. i feel passionless -- but when i wasn't working, i was depressed from having no money. it feels like you can't win. i want to live in a thatched hut on an island and get really weird.
actually, kiona and i both share a dream of living on some acreage in costa rica or something like that. that sounds like one of those things you say when you have a desk job that you're never going to actually do.
so aside from the usual existential crisis about the worth of how i'm spending my time, i'm good. i never, ever thought i would be as good a coder as i've become. i've learned so much from this job and i'm so much more effective, precise, and thorough than i've ever been. i'm getting towards mastery. i suspect if i can survive another couple of years doing this, i will master it, and then my work will take up a lot less time and energy, and i can spend my days calling 1-800 numbers and filling out forms, instead of my nights.
i just bought a new PC exclusively for the purpose of playing games. jk has been filling me in on what to play. i'm sure many doctoral thesises are being written about battlefield 2.
i suppose given that the majority of my blood has russian roots, i should give up on being a shiny happy person and just continue to polish my cynical jokes. i'm doing this mentoring program where i work with 9th graders in seattle's worst high schools. it's one of the hardest, most demanding things i've ever done. but it's been interesting -- not so much the kids, i kind of knew what to expect there -- but the other mentors. i do sometimes think david lynch has it right, we need to just get 8,000 people going om around the world more regularly. the lack of experience i see in the other mentors with the nature of being human is shocking, and it's nice to see people put themselves in a context, like mentoring high school kids, that forces them to stare more deeply into the abyss.
she writes back:
mo' money, mo' problems, eh?
there are more than 8000 people OMing right now, so it takes a few more than that, so join them often. I do it a half hour each day but need to up the ante during these troubled times. and plenty of desk jockeys do bugger off to costa rica or the blackberry farm or the himalayas -- only rich people can afford to be poor in the old ways -- so if that's what you want put your energy toward it... anyway I want the acreage too and so do most people in their right minds, so don't just "share the dream" but make the plan.
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