Signs

Since I've started working at a real job, I've figured out a good basic morning routine. Alarm. Snooze. Alarm. Snooze. Alarm. Get out of bed. Shower, brush teeth, etc. Make tea (one for home, one in the travel mug for work). Eat (and while eating, to my morning web surf). Get dressed. Walk dog. Put on make-up. Finish preparing tea for work. Leave.

It works pretty well and runs about 1.5 hours from first alarm to leave (it would be lots less, except for the snoozes).

Since routines keep the mind focused (or rather, allows you to do things while the mind is half asleep), one can get ready with a minimum amount of stress or worry. And as such, I have a routine once I get to work as well. Park car. Put mug of tea on top of car. Get bags. Go through security. Get to office. Out of bag comes appointment book, Palm Pilot and cell phone. Log in. Check e-mail. Relax. Drink tea. Get to work.

Well, it's always a bad sign when something in the regular routine goes awry for one reason or another. It didn't happen at home. It happened in the work routine. And caused great disruption to the whole of the routine. Today, on the very simple "Put tea on top of car" stage, my tea mug decides to jump off the car and spill itself all over the car and the ground. I think it decided to commit suicide as the mug itself broke (and it was a travel mug, so that's no easy feat). It was such a shocking thing that all I could do for about a minute was look at the ground, watching the last of my tea flowing out of the mug into the crevices of the asphalt.

After waking up from this apparent hypnosis, I realized that I had the rest of the day ahead (and it was only 8:30am), and I needed to get moving. It was so disorienting. I was so confused.

It was at that moment that I realized how, we as human beings, need our habits to function - some much more than others. I don't think I had ever really appreciated it as much as a grad student, since my schedule was so much more fluid. I also realized that I am quite unfunctional in the morning, although I think I'm awake, I'm really running on the backup memory until I have my first sip of my second mug of tea.

words

how many words do you speak a day
what makes them come forth
to laugh and bring joy
to comfort and soothe

what makes the words so powerful
stirring nations to war
quietly keeping the peace
bringing forth pride
drawing out shame

words to comfort a child in tears
words to make you fall in love
words when said which break the heart
words like daggers through the soul

words are a weapon wielded without regard
words are a blanket swaddling the pain
from the mind through the mouth
into the world
and cannot be taken back

All work and no pay

I was looking forward to my first paycheck. Very much so. I was going to run around giddy, finally feeling like a grown-up, with gainful employment and a real income. I was looking forward to it.

And it didn't come... yes, the excitement of getting my very first paycheck from my very first real job was brutally taken away by the evil menace called bureaucracy (it's taken me a long time to learn how to spell that word, so I shall use it a lot from now on). Apparently, something along the way went amiss. An erroneous keystroke, an unfiled paper - you know the deal. Something happened that made the deposit that was supposed to cushion my checking account be refused, diverted, otherwise misdirected... or undirected at all.

See, the problem is, no one knows what went wrong. And as a result, I may not get paid until this coming Friday - and even then, it's not a guarantee.

So, for now, I sit looking at my bills, knowing that I have taxes to pay, and having to dip - I hate dipping. Savings is supposed to be just that - savings. Not dipping funds. But I must.

And now, I just wait.

The phone rings...

... as I am driving home this evening. From the familiar ring tone, (set to Chinese Jingle) I know it is my Dad:


T: Hey Dad. What's up? How are you feeling?

D: Not bad. Have you eaten yet? (note: for those of you who don't already know, this is a very common way for Chinese people to say hello... don't ask me why)

T: Not yet, I'm on my way home now. What's going on?

D: This week is your pay day, right?

T: Yeah...

D: Make a copy of your paycheck!

T: Why?

D: As a souvenir.

T: (eyebrow raised) Do you want it?

D: No, so you can remember your first real paycheck.

T: Dad, I won't get a paycheck. They put it directly in the bank now.

D: Really? Because you work for the government? Then you don't know how much you get.

T: No, Dad. I get a paystub, it tells me how much I get, but the money goes straight into the bank. And I've had it done this way since in school.

D: Huh. I didn't know they did that... Well, make a copy of it anyway so you can remember.

T: Okay, Dad. The next time I'm home, I have to give you the book (my thesis) Goodnight. Talk to you soon.

D: Oh, good. Thank you. Talk to you soon.


It's cute that my Dad wants me to remember every little bit of my new experiences. He asks me a lot if I like the new job. I'm not sure he quite believes how much freedom I have... he's still under the impression that I have to punch a time-clock or something (which I do, sort of, but it's in an Excel spreadsheet). My Dad has always been part of the blue collar, unionized, time-card punching workforce. I think that the idea of me in an office job, where I don't have to punch a clock, makes him very happy. He seems to be whenever we talk about it.

It's cute.

31

Before the stroke of midnight, I just wanted to make sure that I say:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAY!

Sweat and roses

There have been many things that I have been saying that I would do for years. But there was never time or I tried and it wasn't what I thought it would be. One of these such things is yoga. I've gone to a few yoga classes in my life, but I never felt like I was doing anything. We weren't holding poses for very long, my heart rate wasn't being increased in any way... and by the end I generally felt like I had done nothing. Thinking on it for a while, I decided that it must have been the classes I was taking. So I decided I would give it one more try.

I went to a yoga class this evening. But not just any yoga class. A Bikram Yoga class. Now, for those who have never heard of it, Bikram yoga is yoga done in a heated room. Not "Oh, it's balmy and nice in here" kind of heat. It's the "My God this can't possibly be good for you" kind of heat. Or at least that's what went through my head when I first entered the room, sat down, began to be flush and started to sweat. I didn't think that I would make it through the 90 minutes (that's right - 90 minutes) of it.

Not only did I make it through the 90 minutes, sweating more than I think I have ever sweat in my life, but I LOVED every minute of it. It was unbelieveable. And after a nice shower, my body feels cleaner than I've felt in a really long time. And from the signals that my muscles are giving me at this moment, I know I'm going to feel it tomorrow. But I'm definitely going back.


Why roses? Because I got roses today from a wonderful man.

Happy April Fool's

Since it is this fool's prerogative... For classical music geeks everywhere, a composer I had completely forgotten about until listening to my classical station this morning. Here is a sample of the silliness.

Have fun!

Bad directions

Have you ever had to build a piece of say... furniture. And the diagrams and descriptions are so bad that you're not sure you are building it correctly? And that the only way that you can tell things are going well is that what you are building resembles what you hope will come out at the end?

Well, that was part of my day today. I got a new computer cart for my office. Now, I've built all manner of boxed furniture over the years - from IKEA furniture to really heavy desks from Staples. How hard could it be to put together a small computer cart? Well, it becomes difficult when all of the pieces look generally the same, there is no differentiating front from back and when the diagrams in the instructions are unclear as to where the screws go, that at a certain point I just said, "Screw it!" and started putting the thing together in a way that most made sense. (It also didn't help that the screws were impossibly difficult to screw in and my screwdriver was 4 inches long - no leveraging power whatsoever).

I got the cart together, after a couple of hours of fighting with it. Hopefully it won't fall apart. And I used almost all the parts that came in the box (I figured I could forego the second shelf as my CPU wouldn't fit on the cart otherwise). We'll see if it stand the test of (some)time passage.

If not, well... don't be surprised if you hear on the news about my legs getting crushed by a computer monitor.

Hey! Where's the ...?

I have moved several times in my life already. The average time I stay in any particular apartment is about 2-3 years. And one thing that I always find particularly strange is the ability to move somewhere and never unpack certain boxes. Then when you move again, these "pre-packed" boxes (in which I certainly do not remember the contents) get moved along to the next place too. There is always at least one box which never got unpacked since the time I moved in.

The other thing that amazes me is the accumulation of shit over time. I have to say, in the course of packing and weeding out what I didn't want to move with me, I must have thrown out at least 15 full garbage bags. In addition, I donated, I think, 2 full garbage bags of clothes to the St. Vincent de Paul Society. But looking at the amount of stuff that I got rid of, I am amazed that I collected all that stuff in the first place AND that there was actually room for all that shit in the apartment.

Right now, we are in the "living out of boxes" stage of the move. That's when nearly all the essentials (clothing, pots, pans, dishes, whatever food there is) has already been unpacked and are ready to use. I say nearly because, every once in a while, there will be a shout from a room asking, "Hey! Do you know where the insert item is?" And then it's a big shell game of, "Well I thought I saw it here, but I think I moved that box into that room... or maybe I just thought I saw it... no, wait..." And so on.

And I know, that after another couple of weeks, when all is said and done, there will be those one or two lonely boxes left, which are going to get stowed away in the garage, waiting for two years from now when we're ready to move again.

Hey, there's that thing I've been looking for all this time!

Flex time

One of the things that I noticed almost immediately is the change in my state of mind since beginning work. As a student, your work is always on your mind, even if you are not working on it. It always hangs there, poking at you from time to time to remind you that it's there. What I have never experienced is the feeling of leaving your work at work.

I now have three projects on my desk, each with different timelines and levels of depth. But once I left the office, the projects stayed there. Maybe it's because none of the projects is due for another couple of months. Or maybe it's just naivete on my part. Or maybe it's just because it's still new. But I like it. I like that when I'm home, I can just look around and decide what I want to concentrate on without this burden of having something haunting me in the background. (Unfortunately, the only thing to concentrate on at home at the moment are the mess and boxes that need to be unpacked.)

It almost seems frivolous.

First assignments

I received my first two projects today at work. They aren't big projects, but I am in charge of them. They have timelines attached. And they will help me to get my toes wet. My mentor/supervisor decided to take it easy on me and not drop me in at the deep end.

I'm reassured that she is taking the time to make sure that I am comfortable with the material and answers my questions (no matter how stupid they may be) with great patience and completeness. And, as today, going beyond to answer all the extraneous and tangential questions related to the first.

And they say I will get welcomed/hazed at the staff meeting tomorrow morning.

Blank walls

All around me are blank walls. Blank walls in my new apartment. Blank walls in my office. Empty canvases to be filled with art and memories. Such a strange thing. It took over a year to hang things on the wall of the last apartment. I want to do it sooner here. I definitely want to decorate my office - it is really quite bleak at the moment.

It is odd to me that this takes up such a large part of my brain. I figure there would be other things that one would generally deem as "more important" at the forefront. But no. It is the emptiness of the walls which almost completely occupy my mind right now.

I don't know yet just where to begin.

New beginnings

It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak - Dream

This is the new goal of this blog. Welcome back. A new stage has begun and with it, hopefully a new point of view.

Everyone has new beginnings in their lives at one point or another. Things end, new adventures begin, and we must all adjust. I think that this will be the biggest adjustment I will ever have to make. I have never in my life been anything but a student. Only working toward the next degree or educational accomplishment. I have finished my Ph.D. after 7 1/2 long years and now I begin the next stage.

I begin my new career. The first time in my life that I will not be working toward such a defined goal as a degree. This will be the first time in my life that the day to day work does not lead to an inevitable end. And I am not yet sure how I will react to this. I know I will adjust. But setting smaller goals for myself has only ever been a part of a much larger big picture.

I begin a new life. I have moved again. To another city. Different than Baltimore, different than New York. And I must adjust to the new patterns, places to eat, places to shop, roads, highways and a whole host of other things great and small. I even have to learn to navigate in the dark in my own home (which is hard to do with all of the boxes around). Meeting new people and making new friends - things with which I am not always comfortable.

Uprooting an existance to create for oneself a new life is always difficult, exciting, scary, exhilarating, fun, and any number of other adjectives one can think of. But it is the creation of that new existance that is the adventure. And in that creation, in that learning, one continues to create oneself.