I think I might live in "interesting times".
Supposedly there's an ancient Chinese proverb that says "May you live in interesting times." I don't know crap about the validity of that, since most things that sound nicely esoteric and profound get attributed to the ancient Chinese, but it's cool to say, and mostly accurate. Today was definitely... interesting, and I think I know why. More on that in a bit.

I received the following email when I got home today. It was from the me circa about 11:00 am this morning. I am now feeling better, but I do not yet have a sombrero.

This is a letter to myself in about 9 hours, since I will not be able to remember this otherwise.

I am on the verge of a brain-implosion. Among the things threatening to destroy my little utopiverse that has established itself in my skull are:

- the absorption of an endless amount of frustration with bureaucracy. I can't stand the bloody things ordinarily, but recently I have been stewing in a pot of wrath created from the culmination of the entire careers of my co-workers, and all the bitterness and resentfulness towards the shoddy organization of our federal government that entails.

- my further and further hatred towards Netscape 4.x as a browser. Not only it is anal to code for, but it is old and broken as well. This software is crap and should have been off the market years ago. Why people still use it is testament to stubbornness and ignorance of the average computer user. Yes, I realize that upgrades have nasty tendencies of going wrong and being far too frequent, but there's a difference between needless upgrading of
software and using programs that were in use back in the Internet Dark Ages. Netscape 4 is the browser equivalent to the stupid neighbour you've had for years and barely tolerate, yet never move away from.

(I'm having trouble now, since writing this is making my anger fade.)

- being insanely tired, both literally from lack of sleep, and also of my job. Sometimes it seems like April won't come soon enough, and it always seems like 3:45 won't come soon enough.

Well, it took long enough to write this that my anger has faded. It will, of course, resurface by the end of the day, but come quitting time everything seems to just blissfully slide away. This is why my bitching about things that happen during the day always seems lackluster. People don't remember unpleasant things, especially pain, that well. I think it's a survival mechanism. Anyways, I'm good now, but at least try to remember what things were like at about 11:00 this morning.

P.S. Courses and schedules suck as well.

Lo and behold, things did go back to being horrible, and was I ever glad to get out of work today. I think I dislike my job to an enormous degree. Seems that the good bits are far too infrequent, and the bad bits just make it seem like the worst day ever. This, of course, all vanishes immediately as soon as I step outside of the building, similar to wiping a brush over the chaotic whiteboard that is my emotional slate. Goes from "covered with the scribblings of a schitzophrenic" to "clean, white and serene" within instants, and it is this that makes me think I hate my job.

My idea of work is to not work. That doesn't make sense, I know, but within my perspective it's logical: I don't want to say that I work, I just want to say what I do. I mentioned some of the characteristics of my uber dream job before, but now I have compiled a list of all-time Top 5 dream jobs. I came up with the following.

5. Software Engineer. This is what I'm trying to become through school, and I still don't really know what the position actually is. Could be management, could be consulting, could be scheduling/coordinating. I only put it on the list because I was stuck for things that could be better.

4. Chef. I think being a culinary master would be really cool. You get to create, you get to build, you get to express, all with a medium everyone can respect and understand. I may have already mentioned that there is nothing so universal as good food, and I think being able to tap into that and manipulate it with the utmost skill would just be the tits.

3. Game Developer. I like games, and being able to actually create worlds for people to explore and interact with would be very cool. Note that I include all gaming in this, not just video games.

2. Journalist/critic. Because I like doing things and then talking about said things. I like giving my opinion on stuff. I like sampling lots and lots of various works, products and creations and then being able to tell you if they're good or not. The biggest reason though, is that I like learning about new things and investigating, and this would give me a medium to do that.

1. Webcomic artist/Internet commentator. In a nutshell, what Penny Arcade (among others) does. I base this entirely on what I perceive their work to be: a combination of artist, critic, journalist and celebrity. There's more to it, I know, and quite possibly this could be the worst job in the world to have, but I doubt that. The money's probably not that good, but from what I read, it's apparantly enough to support the majority of my habits. Pimping off your stuff and sitting at con desks all day long could be slightly dull, but I would probably get a big charge out of being a celebrity of sorts. The biggest draw that I see is not really having a schedule. Working on what I like to do when I want with only marginal restrictions would kick ass. That and getting to see/hear about/play the latest in games before everyone else. Like I said, I don't have the full picture, and there's no doubt in my mind that PA is the exception, not the norm. Do recall though, that this is a list of dream jobs.

So with that out of the way, I am going to remain where I am, doing what I am doing for the immediate future. Same goes for my subsequent job with RIM, followed by school.* My ultimate future, on the other hand, has been under much consideration. I will definitely be finishing school, since whatever I do, it will involve computers and the internet somehow. I think they're just too cool to ignore. The (substantial) rest of the story though, is in much deliberation. I would really like to have one of those jobs I listed, but I feel I lack one of the necessary talents: creativity. Rather, artistic, cohesive creativity. I don't think I lack creativity in general, since I can think of things no problem. The difficulty is in expressing and communicating it, and to go further, in world-building. I read an article today that kicks so much ass my bottom will be sore for weeks. It essentially states why, if you like comics, you probably also like RPGs and video games. They are the new wave. But that's neither here nor there, and my main beef is the creativity aspect.

*I tried creating a schedule today for my upcoming term, and oh God does it look painful. I have three more school terms to complete, and they will either be 6 courses, 7 courses and 7 courses, or the more likely 7-6-7 scenario. That is bad, unless you're going to or are done with university, whereupon I don't need to tell you that since you probably know. Most students take about 4 courses per term. Arts can take as low as 3. Engineers try to kill themselves with twice that. So I am probably faced with something along the lines of nine-to-five nearly every day, and probably far too loaded down with assignments and labs than is otherwise healthy. The things I do for a career. This little asterisk-note (which I seem to be making more and more of now) is essentially the reasoning behind my past-self's "courses and schedules suck" comment.

This doesn't have anything to do with the post, but it divides things up just swell
The artistic creativity I mentioned basically means I don't know how to make the words that are the funny or the story-telling, and I also don't draw good. I've been meaning to make a webcomic for some time, but I haven't for a couple of reasons: arms and words. Quite frankly, I can write these posts no problem, but fiction is something else. So is comedy, and I don't think my capabilities for producing either are up to the task of comicry. I know, I know, you never know until you try, but not being able to try is also indicative of failure. As for the arms, well, I just have trouble with them. Heads and torsos are fine, but the limbs are complicated. Again, practice would make perfect, but we come back to the "unable to try" stuff. The thought of just going for broke and tossing up what comes to me has popped into my skullbox, but everytime I try to do that I come up dry. No cute characters, no cunning stories, just rantings and ramblings that are nicely suited to blogging, but not webcomicry.

(Aside: I just had the best idea for a domain name, and if at all possible, I want it: webcronomi.com. Just pronounce the whole thing without the 'dot' and if you get it you'll get it. If not, you won't. It's a secular thing. Also, please don't steal it or I will have to be either clever all over again or fall back on my last idea of scribblism.com.)

I'm going to stop now, for fear of slagging this post down even further with my depressive misgivings about my talents. If I ever do figure out what my dream is and go for it though, you'll be the first to know. Instead, I'm going to go on about how my day did a 180-degree turnaround when I got home. First, my hat arrived. Yeah, this hat. On one count, I'm glad that I got something in the mail successfully, and on another count, it's a really cool hat. I am wearing it now, and have been doing so since I opened the package. I will need to get a haircut though since it makes my sideburns go all crazy and Wolverine-like, which isn't the most flattering thing for my image methinks. After that, I went grocery shopping and picked up what I needed for a new variant of sheppard's pie, which I made tonight. The pie is one of my comfort foods, and to make it far more successfully than before, and with veggies to boot, made me feel much better. Also, I found a bunch of new links that will probably amuse some when I post them (will be a while though), including this article. It's the same one as before, but I'm pimping it twice since I think it's so good. Also, in an unprecedented bout of attribution, the link was from Alas, A Blog! (sidebar) so you can see where I get most of my links. I'll be doing more of this in the future, since I've been reading that to not do so is immenesly disrespectful and internet folk look down on it.

Basically, things go from sucktastic at work, where I am tired and frustrated (usually at Netscape, since it neither reloads properly, nor displays pages right, and the only way to get to the Javascript console is to type "javascript:" in the address bar and it tries to thwart you nearly every time!), to pretty kickass at home, where I am none of the above. This could be because of my job, which I still think I dislike, or also because of internet withdrawal. I am a downright crack-fiend junkie, and being disconnected all day might be taking it's toll. That's due to the job though, so perhaps it is my employment after all. (Now that I think about it, I go without the net all day when I'm at school, so it's definitely the job.)

And before you explode because I bitch about work again, here's some links.
I agree. Based on what I read in the summary, and especially the cited sources of corruption of the system, that is.

Sheer lunacy. Further proof that people are far to insecure for their own good, and place entirely too much faith in rules, regulations and policies. Well, probably not, but it seems that way sometimes. I mean, rules and stuff are fine provided the rules make sense and are well-founded, but these things should be taken in context or things just get dumb.

I can't tell if these are serious or not. I mean, at first glance they're fine, but as you read on it gets kind of surreal.

Finally, something just plain hilarious. I was banking on a decent note to finish on, and stupid people don't get too much funnier.

Wow. I'm exhausted from typing now, so I'ma prescribe myself some "doing dishes" followed by Beyond Good and Evil. Missed Corner Gas, so I have to get some chair time in somehow. The IKEA chair demands it.  ¶ 6:25 p.m.