A Very Post Adolescent Angst (Strings of Data)
My brain has locked
Frozen
Eternal twirling hourglass
A blue screen of death
I think to myself, this is not how my life was supposed to turn out.
I am bogged down by the minutia of data that has become post modern adult life
PINs
Passwords
Usernames
Bank balances
Retirement accounts
Bills to be paid
IRS
Taxes
And now this…
This…job….
These strings and strings of data needing to be analyzed...
Minutia is a great word to describe this.
My boss won’t think it a trifling matter, it is money after all.
But, as I sit staring at this spreadsheet, pulled from our SQL database, barely containing the scream that is, “What the fuck am I looking at anyway,” I can’t help but believe that minutia should be a word that means bullshit…piles and piles of knee deep bullshit.
Honestly, that is what I thought it meant until a friend suggest I look it up on dictinonary.com.
My latest bit of functional illiteracy doesn’t surprise me. Until recently I had been misusing the word “penultimate,” as it turns out.
Once again, ladies and gentlemen, Dictionary.com:
penultimate (pɪˈnʌltɪmɪt)
- adj
1.
next to the last
- n
2.
anything that is next to the last, esp a penult
[C17: from Latin paene almost + ultimate , on the model of Latin paenultimus ]
So using it appropriately in a sentence, Yale Street is the penultimate stop before the F Line terminates at Southmoor Station. Contrast that with how I had previously used the word. I took penultimate to mean the “wowie zowieness of ultimate awesomeness” or such. Again I submit to you that I am a functional illiterate.
Sometimes I am amazed that I graduated high school let alone earned a college degree. I am a sterling endorsement of the American public school system. The fact that I graduated is truly no child left behind.
So if not these strings of data would then what I be doing?
Would you like fries with that?
I was supposed to be the American Jacques Cousteau.
At the very least I wanted to be an astronaut or a cowboy.
Or a post modern Socrates - an irascible yet affable gadfly saving society from itself.
I have forced myself to conform to the corporate workaday world to meet my needs…just barely.
There’s not a lot of paycheck between me and giving $10.00 hand jobs in the parking lot to make rent each month.
My biggest problem is maturity. At 45 I still have way more of the dreamer in me than I do the pragmatist. I dream big. But, work in a cubicle. What would happen if razed these pre-formed cubicle walls to the ground? What would happen if I yelled, “No more fucking Jell-o for me mom,” at the top of my lungs and disregarded the bemused and cynical stares of my coworkers?
Would I be happier then?
Would I be able to look my fear in the eye?