The Eternally Departed
Well, I talked to Shanna for the last time before she leaves for Prattville. The trip is of course a Good Thing™, but it's two weeks and I will miss her a lot.
It occured to me as she left that Shanna is always gone in my mind; I can never look at her arrival, only her departure. A classic example of pessimism, maybe, but it's true. I'm beginning to believe it's an inverse of The TK Maxx Effect - when I was ready to give the business more of my time, I thought it would be sufficient just to cut my hours down, and not quit completely. I was reduced to working just four hours on a Saturday and Sunday, and the rest of my week was completely free for whatever I wanted... except that it wasn't. From the time I left on Sunday night, the week was overshadowed only by the fact that in six days time, I would have to go to work again. It didn't matter that it was an entire week away, it was there, looming in the distance, destroying my motivation to do anything. This is the opposite - the moment we begin talking, the end is in sight. I have a great hated for our time allocation; not only is an hour not enough to start anything, but it's position in the day is fixed too. It's quite possible that for hours I could be in a great mood, and we'd have had a good conversation, and then it'll go down just before she comes online, and we'll have an hour of near-silence instead. That's the worst thing, because you can't do anything about it once you've begun. Now you entered your 'slot', you'd better finish it, and if I don't feel like I've made proper use of it by the end, I feel very bad, and that is not how it should be. No pressure, no limits, no expectations. I've known it like that before... but that feels so long ago now. For now I will just go on missing the eternally departed.
Having said all that, I hope she enjoys seeing her friends again, and most of our time tonight was good.
I didn't have anything specific to do today, but I felt obligated not to waste it, and so I did a draft for Cyrus' site. It needs some work, but I'm pleased with it. I also merged mine and Graham's designs for the tattooist's site, and although that too is just a template to show for approval, it does look extremely nice now. We went down to the Cali office on... some day previous to today, I really can't remember. The cables we'd been promised had been installed, but we arrived to find the internet connection wasn't working any more. Couldn't fix it, so Graham called NTL and they said they'd send someone. Darius'd ignored our recommendations once more for an ethernet printer, and instead tried to adapt ethernet to USB. Nice idea, except that what he'd bought was a USB ethernet adaptor, which serves completely the opposite function. So, that won't work, and when we see him on Monday, the system still won't all be going, but it's not our fault in any way any more, and that invoice is still due by the end of the month or we're not working there until it's paid.
Now it's 2am, and I'm sat here eating a bowl of various dry cereal. Quite sad really. Suppose I'll drink my tea and go to bed.
It occured to me as she left that Shanna is always gone in my mind; I can never look at her arrival, only her departure. A classic example of pessimism, maybe, but it's true. I'm beginning to believe it's an inverse of The TK Maxx Effect - when I was ready to give the business more of my time, I thought it would be sufficient just to cut my hours down, and not quit completely. I was reduced to working just four hours on a Saturday and Sunday, and the rest of my week was completely free for whatever I wanted... except that it wasn't. From the time I left on Sunday night, the week was overshadowed only by the fact that in six days time, I would have to go to work again. It didn't matter that it was an entire week away, it was there, looming in the distance, destroying my motivation to do anything. This is the opposite - the moment we begin talking, the end is in sight. I have a great hated for our time allocation; not only is an hour not enough to start anything, but it's position in the day is fixed too. It's quite possible that for hours I could be in a great mood, and we'd have had a good conversation, and then it'll go down just before she comes online, and we'll have an hour of near-silence instead. That's the worst thing, because you can't do anything about it once you've begun. Now you entered your 'slot', you'd better finish it, and if I don't feel like I've made proper use of it by the end, I feel very bad, and that is not how it should be. No pressure, no limits, no expectations. I've known it like that before... but that feels so long ago now. For now I will just go on missing the eternally departed.
Having said all that, I hope she enjoys seeing her friends again, and most of our time tonight was good.
I didn't have anything specific to do today, but I felt obligated not to waste it, and so I did a draft for Cyrus' site. It needs some work, but I'm pleased with it. I also merged mine and Graham's designs for the tattooist's site, and although that too is just a template to show for approval, it does look extremely nice now. We went down to the Cali office on... some day previous to today, I really can't remember. The cables we'd been promised had been installed, but we arrived to find the internet connection wasn't working any more. Couldn't fix it, so Graham called NTL and they said they'd send someone. Darius'd ignored our recommendations once more for an ethernet printer, and instead tried to adapt ethernet to USB. Nice idea, except that what he'd bought was a USB ethernet adaptor, which serves completely the opposite function. So, that won't work, and when we see him on Monday, the system still won't all be going, but it's not our fault in any way any more, and that invoice is still due by the end of the month or we're not working there until it's paid.
Now it's 2am, and I'm sat here eating a bowl of various dry cereal. Quite sad really. Suppose I'll drink my tea and go to bed.