Midnight Creative Juices
I want to thank the calendar for moving on past 2006, past the retail holiday season, and past Mayka's multiple consecutive seven-day work weeks.
I'm getting a couple more days off from Apple now that less Specialists are needed on the floor, and the managers have been kind enough to negotiate with me about limiting my availability. I like working there, but working Here, There, or Anywhere will always impede on my own personal time.
Last night I took advantage of the until-recently rare dinner hours at home and started playing around with my .Mac site. (It's currently under construction but maybe I'll figure out what the Hell happened and you'll be able to see something soon.) I had a slew of ideas flowing through my mind at the time. Nearly two pages' worth in my pug pocket notebook, which means many little taglines that want to blossom into something big (like two, maybe three paragraphs each).
I've been starving for that time for a while. Some time to sit down and think and write coherently. Some place to put all my photos where there's reason to actually edit them and give them some critique. My creative juices need release. Unfortunately, my creative juices tend to flow around midnight so I've got a love-hate relationship with inspirational winds of time and morning cell phone alarms.
I think last night's need to expel creative energy came from filling out my 401K. Since this is my first "real" job out of college, every phase has been something new. The regular 9 to 5, the commute, the distancing from friends, the secret social chats during working hours. Then the paperwork: the acceptance letter, the intellectual property agreements, the benefits package, and the 401K. Last night I posted an away message of desperation inviting anyone with input to help guide me. I still have no clue about the 401K. (But what does it all mean??) I filled it out based on the advice of some very helpful people (Thanks Chris and Abe.), but the truth is this seems a little "adult," a little over my head.
Am I really this old? Does every other 23 year old invest in a 401K?
I should have gone to that seminar in college.
Whatever the answer, it prompted me to start a personal campaign to centralize my photos. After snapping a bunch during Asia's visit to the Bay and Macworld, I felt a need to reorganize my snapshotted ("Snapshot?") life - and not by using Facebook or Flickr. I wanted to feel as if I had more involvement in my own project. I am not a web developer, but somehow the process of selecting, adjusting, rotating, cropping, writing, editing, and saving all the trinkets that go into a blog/plog/website seemed to be the closest I could come to bringing a Netbaby to life.
It was exciting to sit there and wait for programs to load and register each command. I had my new JBL Creature IIs playing overhead (in black, to go with my closeted goth heart) and it felt like I had created my perfect little Imagination Nook. My bedroom door was closed with my back ready to discourage greetings from anyone who walked in, and I was ready to lose myself in all the upcoming mouse clicks and eye squints.
The Real World adult in me seems to be growing, because it made me go to bed at around 12:15. Midnight-fifteen. I used to leave for clubbing at midnights on random weeknights simply because one other person sent a well-timed IM, and here I was going to bed so that I could reasonably drive myself to BART to catch the 8 o' clock train. It was lame. But instead of letting myself stop there I decided to jump on the bandwagon of people laptopping to on public transportation and brought the MaykaBook Pro along for its first BART ride. (On Day 2 of Macworld, no less.) "I will do more tomorrow! And in the morning!" I said.
It was neither trendy nor nerdy nor sexy nor necessary, but it was nice. The Indian woman next to me did the typical BART thing and totally ignored the goings-on to her left. I sat in the aisle where seats change direction so I don't believe anyone was peeking over my shoulder. Regardless of whether or not all the SF bankers, engineers, and art students cared to find out whether I was watching porn or writing a treatise on Pastafarianism, I was so happily involved in editing photos for my .Mac buttons. It was almost ridiculous. It was one of few BART rides where I stayed awake the entire time, and I just wanted the ride to continue so that I could make snazzy thumbnails for all the photo albums while the beautiful Bay Area streamed by my window. But darnit, Union City, Hayward, and Oakland all came and went, and eventually the loudspeaker announced over my (wonderful) earphones that we were "Now approaching Montgomery."
It was perfect, though. I probably never would have seen the intense, heavy fog making its way through the East Bay to SF had it not been for staying awake. Despite having taken a diet pill (which is loaded with caffeine [which wreaks havoc on my body]) before breakfast my mind was surprisingly at ease. Not at ease in the sense that I was ready and waiting to go to bed or at ease in the sense that I was incredibly bored with nothing to do. I had just the right amount of stimuli to keep me engaged and just the right amount of comfort to keep me feeling like I was being held and protected by a wonderful man who had a good heart.
My MacBook Pro non-recalled battery was my security blanket for the day.
I can't wait for the ride home so I can wear down that iSkin some more. :D
(Apparently the Creature IIs no longer come in black. I feel so cool.)
I'm getting a couple more days off from Apple now that less Specialists are needed on the floor, and the managers have been kind enough to negotiate with me about limiting my availability. I like working there, but working Here, There, or Anywhere will always impede on my own personal time.
Last night I took advantage of the until-recently rare dinner hours at home and started playing around with my .Mac site. (It's currently under construction but maybe I'll figure out what the Hell happened and you'll be able to see something soon.) I had a slew of ideas flowing through my mind at the time. Nearly two pages' worth in my pug pocket notebook, which means many little taglines that want to blossom into something big (like two, maybe three paragraphs each).
I've been starving for that time for a while. Some time to sit down and think and write coherently. Some place to put all my photos where there's reason to actually edit them and give them some critique. My creative juices need release. Unfortunately, my creative juices tend to flow around midnight so I've got a love-hate relationship with inspirational winds of time and morning cell phone alarms.
I think last night's need to expel creative energy came from filling out my 401K. Since this is my first "real" job out of college, every phase has been something new. The regular 9 to 5, the commute, the distancing from friends, the secret social chats during working hours. Then the paperwork: the acceptance letter, the intellectual property agreements, the benefits package, and the 401K. Last night I posted an away message of desperation inviting anyone with input to help guide me. I still have no clue about the 401K. (But what does it all mean??) I filled it out based on the advice of some very helpful people (Thanks Chris and Abe.), but the truth is this seems a little "adult," a little over my head.
Am I really this old? Does every other 23 year old invest in a 401K?
I should have gone to that seminar in college.
Whatever the answer, it prompted me to start a personal campaign to centralize my photos. After snapping a bunch during Asia's visit to the Bay and Macworld, I felt a need to reorganize my snapshotted ("Snapshot?") life - and not by using Facebook or Flickr. I wanted to feel as if I had more involvement in my own project. I am not a web developer, but somehow the process of selecting, adjusting, rotating, cropping, writing, editing, and saving all the trinkets that go into a blog/plog/website seemed to be the closest I could come to bringing a Netbaby to life.
It was exciting to sit there and wait for programs to load and register each command. I had my new JBL Creature IIs playing overhead (in black, to go with my closeted goth heart) and it felt like I had created my perfect little Imagination Nook. My bedroom door was closed with my back ready to discourage greetings from anyone who walked in, and I was ready to lose myself in all the upcoming mouse clicks and eye squints.
The Real World adult in me seems to be growing, because it made me go to bed at around 12:15. Midnight-fifteen. I used to leave for clubbing at midnights on random weeknights simply because one other person sent a well-timed IM, and here I was going to bed so that I could reasonably drive myself to BART to catch the 8 o' clock train. It was lame. But instead of letting myself stop there I decided to jump on the bandwagon of people laptopping to on public transportation and brought the MaykaBook Pro along for its first BART ride. (On Day 2 of Macworld, no less.) "I will do more tomorrow! And in the morning!" I said.
It was neither trendy nor nerdy nor sexy nor necessary, but it was nice. The Indian woman next to me did the typical BART thing and totally ignored the goings-on to her left. I sat in the aisle where seats change direction so I don't believe anyone was peeking over my shoulder. Regardless of whether or not all the SF bankers, engineers, and art students cared to find out whether I was watching porn or writing a treatise on Pastafarianism, I was so happily involved in editing photos for my .Mac buttons. It was almost ridiculous. It was one of few BART rides where I stayed awake the entire time, and I just wanted the ride to continue so that I could make snazzy thumbnails for all the photo albums while the beautiful Bay Area streamed by my window. But darnit, Union City, Hayward, and Oakland all came and went, and eventually the loudspeaker announced over my (wonderful) earphones that we were "Now approaching Montgomery."
It was perfect, though. I probably never would have seen the intense, heavy fog making its way through the East Bay to SF had it not been for staying awake. Despite having taken a diet pill (which is loaded with caffeine [which wreaks havoc on my body]) before breakfast my mind was surprisingly at ease. Not at ease in the sense that I was ready and waiting to go to bed or at ease in the sense that I was incredibly bored with nothing to do. I had just the right amount of stimuli to keep me engaged and just the right amount of comfort to keep me feeling like I was being held and protected by a wonderful man who had a good heart.
My MacBook Pro non-recalled battery was my security blanket for the day.
I can't wait for the ride home so I can wear down that iSkin some more. :D
(Apparently the Creature IIs no longer come in black. I feel so cool.)