Still Water Below the Rapids

Feeling the excitement of the weekend approaching; I can hardly sit still. Major deadlines, like so many dragons, are slain, only their corpses and my wounds, that will scar when healed, serve to remind me of what happened. My computer mouse drips their blood from its tired buttons and the CPU of my noble steed snorts its victory. I must now return to my castle and sandy-haired maiden and ride her off into the sunset (toward a brewery bursting with festive music). Victory is mine!

I wrote those words in jest as a fun email to B__ this afternoon. I thought they were worthy of sharing so I tossed them up here.

It’s funny how adversity – or rather the overcoming of it – is a reward in itself. Most of the time I hate my job because I’m bored. I hate it when I’m busy, too, because it intrudes into my life outside of work, but the pressure and excitement of tight deadlines and monumental effort are certainly a easy way to break the boredom. I wouldn’t want to be busy all the time like I was the last two weeks for any amount of money, though. I like that most of the time my job fits into a defined amount of time and effort with only a few hiccups a year. But as stressful as they are, I need those hiccups to wake me up and shake me a little, not necessarily for the shaking itself but the feeling when the shaking stops. As the inimitable Dr. J Doug Faires said about learning derivative calculus with the limit method first before doing it the easy way, “Why do we bang our heads against the wall so much? Because it feel so good when you stop.”