This morning, one of my most best-est friends got on a plane bound for the other side of the planet. She's going to a far-off land for a long time to do noble work. Actually, it's really not that long of a time, but it sure feels like it.

I've known her for almost 12 years now. We went to high school and college together. We laboured through high school marching band and college calculus, went to kite festivals, all kinds of parties, attended marriages, experienced births and deaths, the whole gamut of life experiences. Many other friends have come and gone, but she is one of the few that lasted, and she is one of the few that I would rather give my life than lose her.

I wish everyone would have an opportunity to have such an amazing friend. I'm sure the people she meets in her new home will be so thoroughly blessed to know her. I consider them to be among the luckiest people on the planet.

Safe journey, Friend. Come back to me in one piece. Call me when you're in town, and I'll be sure to do the same.

¶ 12:18 PM 0 comments

I had this wacky dream last night. I dreamed I was a challenger on Iron Chef. I don't remember who I was going up against though.

"We unveil the ingredient! LEMONS!" Yeah, it's kinda lame. Not like "SPINY LOBSTER" or "ASPARAGUS". But whatever.

Anyway, so I get started cooking (keep in mind, I'm a pastry chef challenger), and I'm having chef's block. Can't figure out what to make with lemons. Though being a pastry chef, my first idea is to make a lemon chiffon pie. But you can't win on Iron Chef with just a lemon chiffon pie. So I tried to put something together with some kind of lemon-herb roasted chicken. It took me a while to figure out what to do with the lemon-herb roasted chicken, and that unfortunately took almost all of my time. I was really sad that I didn't have time to make the lemon chiffon pie, and all I had to offer was two servings of lemon-herb roasted chicken (far short of the required five or six servings). I think most of the problem was that I didn't have any sous chefs helping me.

Anyway, I think I woke up before the verdict was announced, but I quickly fell asleep again, and in that dream I was once again an Iron Chef challenger, and the first thing I did was make a lemon merengue pie. (Oddly enough, the theme ingredient was again lemons.) Then I woke up again and rolled out of bed (it was time to get up).

¶ 11:25 PM 0 comments

"A newt??"

"I got better...."

I feel really really good right now. I had a nice little epiphany at work. I've become Wally from the Dilbert cartoons. Wally is often characterized as walking around the office, pretending to be busy, carrying a coffee mug. I walk around the office, pretending to be busy, carrying a Nalgene water bottle. It's not so much that I'm trying to pretend to be busy, but that I do 8 hours' worth of work in 8 hours, as oppsed to 8 hours' worth of work in 6. So in essence, I have an extra 2 hours in a day to walk around the office, pretending to be busy, carrying a water bottle.

As it turns out, I'm working at the same pace as everyone else now. I normally work pretty quickly, and for the past 2 years I'd been working at my normal pace, and that invariably resulted in a paucity of tasks. My supervisors would see the slack, so they'd give me more work to do, which I'd do at my normal, hurried pace--lather, rinse, repeat. For 2 years I did a lot of work, spending a lot of time doing it, and reaped nearly no reward.

So this week, I had an epiphany. The epiphany stemmed from an encounter I had with some co-workers (see On Cluefulness, or Lack Thereof) in which I realized that I made enough people mad at me that an entire site won't talk to me. And I'm OK with this. See, the information I need to do my job exists in the brains of people at that site. If they won't talk to me, then I can't do my job, so I have no work to do. It's pretty simple really.

I've realized that over the last 2 years, I've subconciously put pressure on myself to succeed. In fact, I am a self-professed perfectionist, and quite often I don't even reach my own high standards of perfection, let alone anyone else. For the last 2 years, my work ethic reflected closely my perfectionism, and for 2 years no one has been able to meet my standard, and for 2 years it has worn me down into a depressed blob of a person.

So now, I'm free from my own expectations, and thus from my expectations of what people should expect from me. I don't care what people think of me as a person, or as an engineer. I do my work, and I live my life as I want to, and that's good enough. I don't have to be SuperGenius Engineer.

The other part of this epiphany is that I now have an end goal to strive for. I don't care if I get laid of tomorrow or next week. In fact, where do I sign up for voluntary lay offs? In 9 months, I won't be an engineer anymore, and in 9 months, I'll be pursuing a dream and living a great adventure into the uncharted waters of My Destiny. In 2 years, I'll be qualified to crank out wedding cakes and cookbooks, and in one year at my high school reunion (I'm still undecided if I want to go), I'll be able to say "I'm a pastry chef, not because I couldn't do anything else, but because I want to."

I remember now what life was like, when I wasn't depressed. I thought those memories were long-ago faded, but I guess I still had hope that I could go back to that life of happiness and joy. As I look forward, I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm running at it full-bore, and I'm not looking back. I don't regret anything from the last 6 years of being an engineer. I don't regret spending 5 years at University working toward a computer degree. But I also don't regret giving it all up to pursue a dream, a dream that could make me happy again.

¶ 11:12 AM 0 comments

In other news, I'm starting a new project. No, unfortunately this is not a new work project, though that would be really really nice right now.

I'm going to write a book. A cookbook, more specifically. I'll have to do a lot of careful research and book reading, but it'll be a fun and interesting project. There will also be lots of taste-testing. Lots. Besides, I figure having a successful book on my resume would make job-hunting after culinary school a lot easier.

If any of you loyal readers want to be taste-testers, let me know. You know how to find me.

¶ 9:57 AM 1 comments

Every now and then, I just want to reply to someone, "I don't speak English." It's easier for everyone if I just don't speak English. Maybe I'll start answering e-mails in Norwegian....

Here's the deal. This week, I was waiting for a clue from someone who doesn't have any. Then I had to deal with someone who thought he had all the clues but really only had some. When I finally got a clue from the first guy, it wasn't even the right clue that I needed. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a clue what's going one, and that's why I was asking for them. But when I actually had a clue, it was right.

The problem with cluelessness is that the method for imparting clues is messy and often illegal (criminal mischief, at least; more usually assault and battery, or assault with a clueful weapon). Besides, I'd have to go all the way to the East Coast in order to impart clues upon the people who really need them. And all the people who used to have all the clues are gone now and didn't have a chance to transfer them to those of us who are without clues. So all those useful clues are lost. One of those clueful people is sort of around, but she gets bombarded with questions from the clueless (myself included), though I felt better when she said I wasn't even coming close to the level of cluelessness she's seen from everyone else. Then there are the clueless people in charge of things. Some of them have clues, but when morale is wholly displaced by apathy, cluefulness ceaes to matter (like the points on Whose Line is it Anyway?), and you know things are going south.

¶ 11:54 PM 0 comments