The Shortest Days

One of my corporate weekend warrior friends just announced he's quit his job and is doing six months in JBay followed by a year in Oz. The E said she wants to spend her holidays wherever I go this year, and it's helping her survive the work/city transition that has her pulling ten hour days. But she only gets two weeks, so I'm not sure if she'll be able to make the jump.

This is my last day of work for 16 days, my brother is swinging through town in the middle of the night; we'll be at our parents house by the A.M. I have five months left on my contract, four months left at my office. An insane testament to time passing.

This year was necessary but repetition is not. I needed to know what was out there, and to finish some things. Around this time last year one of my wiser friends told me not to give it all up too quickly, without elaboration, and I often reflected on what provoked that. Maybe what he was getting at was that before you dismiss something you need to understand what it is, to move forward without the spectre of regret. Insert Mark Twain reference here, followed by Road Less Travelled musings, etc.

So now it's all choices and information.

I'm not really sure long term thinking yields particularly amazing results. We all want to believe that we control the future, in the same way that we want to believe we can live forever. It's actually one of two reasons laws are so prevalent: devising methods of controlling the future, securing certainty (the first, of course, being something about anarchy and Lockean consensus). This is actually kind of culturally specific. In other places, fairness or tradition govern and people don't make Wills. Division of property upon death is customary and assumed. But we really, really like long term thinking and the idea we, the Anglo-Saxon legacy, can decide who gets our stuff.

A good life is built in small pieces.

Right now I'm getting antagonistic emails from my least favorite administrative assistant, usually demanding I do things she could do herself. This is the woman who instead of leaving her Christmas baking in the coffee room like everyone else set it in front of her desk so she could monitor it and ensure everyone thanked her for her contribution (it was, as expected, not very good). Always trying to eke out her territory and assert her importance. She came up in an era where women didn't do what I do and she seems to resent both my youth and education. Interestingly, it makes her miserable to be miserable and yet she keeps on with it as if someday the world will accede to her demands, throwing two more cents into the crotchety jerk bank every chance she gets.