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Work | Friends | Dreams
Jun. 13th, 2003 03:15 amBoss praised our group at today's meeting, saying that this is the first informatix bunch he's worked with that's responded to complexifying customer demands by simplifying the products' designs. He's right, too; go us. I got a taste of some of that today, when he and J tossed out my proposal for a system-wide session-management system as being needlessly baroque. Over the next half hour we sketched out a much better one, with only one moving part (so to speak). Yes, this is a good group.
Seeing my ole friends L and S next weekend will be very good, though it is strange to think I haven't seen em for about four years. Since that time, they graduated college, got married (to each other), got careers, house, dog and cat. I, meanwhile, left Maine for Boston, became a professional writer (while remaining a programmer), and made many many new friends.
I hold that the catalyst for all this was, in fact, my 1999 visit to Baltimore, to see L & S & co, emphasis on the & co. Spending just a weekend in the presence of this circle of friends living in a colorful city (more colorful than my own city, anyway) convinced me that I wanted one too, very badly. After that, while I did have one or two people in Maine I could call good friends, every day I spent in Waterville made me feel more and more out of place, and unsatisfied with my location and my life. I yearned to go somewhere that didn't feel so backwards. I wanted to be... where the geeks were! And that is why I am here, and very happy. (I am also happy that my Maine friendships continue, and even increase, as I have written about.)
So, yes. Seeing them in person for the first time since all this happened will be strange and good.
For all that, though, I feel I haven't been as active as I could be in cultivating local friendships. I think it's OK to be more introverted and "antisocial" than otherwise, if that's yer bag (and it is mine), but it'd be a good trick to brace this with just the right level of friend-contact to keep oneself feeling socially fulfilled, and continually inspired, if that makes any sense.
Over the last year I've been going to more social events in the local circles I feel most comfortable in, and have been feeling increasingly accepted within them, so that's good. Since I moved, these same people have been all Hey Jmac! How's the place! I can't wait to see it! You should invite us over! How's Saturday? Invite us over Saturday!!! and I say uh buh? and spend Saturday obliviously eatin' muffins and pickin' my nose and so on. This, I should work on changing. I do not think it will be difficult.
Thursday morning was interesting... I awoke before my alarm to the sound of the Street sweepin, move ya cahs voice. Apparently in Somerville this means "you have a few minutes to drive your car someplace else" versus Cambridge, were it means "don't worry, we've already moved it for you." So I was able to stumble into some clothes and blearily relocate Car, which has already been hauled enough times, thanks.
But oh the twin screws digging into my temples the whole time; I could barely grip the wheel, friends. This was not a caffeine headache, but the remains of the who-knows-why, honest-working-man's headache I got yesterday, and temporarily tamped down with the last of my little bottle of "migraine-strength" Excederin. (I bought the bottle at Origins 2002, which means it took me almost exactly one year to work my way through it. I suppose that's pretty good.) So I went right back to bed, and four (blah) more hours of sleep cured me of it. Or rather, it got swapped out: I now had the very different, mushy, smothery pain that I recognized as the one I get if I enter an afternoon without any caffeine input (even if it was because I spent the morning asleep). And it's got a simple fix. Fix indeed. Cheers!
What strange dreams I have had lately... three nights in a row, a theme of disappointing my waking-world friends in some way. The first night, a friend discovers information that I find embarrassing, and while she takes it in stride, it still makes me uncomfortable, with speculation about how this changes her image of me. In the two more recent dreams, I accidentally wreck things belonging to former housemates M and Ch. They respectively react as I'd expect them to iRL (M aggressively forgives me, Ch demands I reimburse him (and as a result I feel worse about the M situation because at least Ch sets out a clear-cut price for forgiveness, while M asks nothing, leaving my dream-self feeling like I still owe a debt... bah, fooey)).
It makes me smile to think that the internalized copies of my friends have been so active lately, despite the disturbing context.