I spent the evening cleaning out a bunch of ancient user manuals from my bookshelf. Good books, and good programs—back in the day. I spent more hours than I care to count programming in HyperCard; today I tore apart and recycled my old HyperCard texts. Also soon to meet their maker are manuals for SmartSketch (the great-great-great-grandparent of Flash, believe it or not, and the only program that’s ever let me do vector-based drawing… Illustrator sucks, in comparison, for just whipping things out), RAM Doubler 2 (a lifesaver for Mac users BITD), ColorIt (used to be a good, cheap alternative to Photoshop), and a bunch of programming books for the Classic Mac OS.

The HyperCard books hurt the most, though. I spent many an hour with my nose buried in them, and they were the last tangible evidence (programs are never really tangible, at least to my mind) of that part of my childhood.

…

GreyDuck’s in a funk this evening, and I’m all but there with him. It looks like Brian might be headed up to Portland in a short period of time. I’ve all but worked myself out of work, now that I’ve finished my programming tasks. I tried looking at my actuarial text the other night, and discovered that all the probability has drained out of my head once again. I’m not even sure that this whole actuarial angle is really my cup of tea; it’s always been a convenient direction to head, since I’ve had no better direction in life, with a job description that seems to play to my strengths (not to mention my majors). It would almost certainly mean moving to a large city, though—whereas I love small towns—and there’s a good chance I’d end up working in the bowels of some insurance company.

My time here, of living life the way I have, is drawing to an end—and I have no clear direction to head next.

The lesson I’ve learned from observing others, for better or worse, is that it absolutely sucks to be the cog on someone else’s gear. When your priorities don’t mesh with those of the company you’re working for, the best you can hope for is that your work will allow you to enjoy your true passions around the edges of work. I’d prefer to have passion about my work, as well—to spend that much time of your life half-heartedly seems like a terrible waste.

Historically, it seems, parents would work hard so that their children could have a better life—and that better life would be seen by their children having a larger income than their parents did. My chances of besting my father’s income are slim; moreover, I don’t think I would have a better life, even if I did rake in the cash. It seems to me (and perhaps I’m just compensating for my inadequacy), then, that they way to do better is to find joy in the things that I do.

I just don’t have a clue where to start looking.

…

On a lighter note: House rocks. It’s a show featuring an antisocial maverick doctor (Dr. House, hence the show’s title)—who, incidentally, has the most disturbingly clear blue eyes I’ve ever seen (contacts?)—and his team, and their attempts to diagnose and cure a patient’s bizarre ailment. I suspect it airs at the same time as NCIS, though, which is the one thing that might make me dust off my VCR.