One of those days

There are those days where most of it is spent doing what you must do, not what you want to do. The stuff that pays the mortgage and keeps the client/boss/higher-up/whomever happy, but otherwise feels like a prison, no matter how gilded they may be. Ain't adulthood grand?

I just had one of those days, staring at tiny cells in a giant spreadsheet, wrist deep in formulas and numerical what ifs. Actually, it's been the better part of the last couple of weeks in this numerical maze. My poor eyes are ready to quit on me and now I think what it means to have one's brain fried. Mine's over, easy.

So here now past the witching hour I'm dead beat and ready to sleep but I decide to treat my eyes (and my soul for that matter) to some photography and some stream of semi-conscious, semi-creative writing. I find comfort in photos. And words too. They've been constant companions for most of my adult life, and now in the midst of middle age and my fifth mid-life crisis (I've been having them every five years since college), I find solace in my old friends as they massage and soothe the regions of my cerebral cortex that have atrophied as of late. My creative self must have a sense of humor though, as this Pinkhassov-inspired photo also bears a striking resemblance to the cells of a spreadsheet. On meth.

The agenda for tomorrow calls for more spreadsheets. And more adulthood. Hey, you can't win them all.

I miss words

I never thought that I'd say this - I miss writing. The agonizingly painful process of laying down words, stringing them together with spaces and punctuation and duct tape and hoping that it makes sense.

It's never come easy to me - ask my wife whenever I am under deadline - but it's also singularly satisfying. Words bounce around the inside of my skull all day - more than pictures do - colliding and coagulating in unexpected ways. They clog up my esophagus as I'm deep in thought, and then more often than not come out in a jumble of near incomprehension. My mouth, you see, is a comparatively blunt instrument. My fingertips, on the other hand (both of them, actually), are much more honed, and much more in tune with the bouncing in my skull.

Power of words

When was the last time that you read a good argument online? Something that made you rethink your position on a topic? When was the last time a sensitive discussion on a forum or message board did not devolve instead of evolve?

With more of us facing keyboards every day we certainly seem to be saying more and listening less.