Auto-Pause Set to Round

So, in pursuit of recreation, I finished up Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter last night. Fun to hear all the guys & their witty vocalizations once again. Anyway, I was having some trouble with the final battle (vs. an ancient dragon plus numerous henchmen), when I went into Game Options and switched to an Auto-Pause at the end of each round. Suddenly, the battle was a breeze!

loki

I have, throughout my life, taken on way WAY too much. Always busy with a number of endeavors, with another number of concepts just "out there" into which I have just not actually launched. Ideas flow easily for me, but follow-through not quite so much so. The process is cyclical-the workload and stress builds up and builds up until it explodes and I have a couple days in a row where I'm depressed and pretty much paralyzed into inaction. Then it starts over again.

Anyway, this last time I think the stresses and pressures built up for longer than ever before-duties to school & Lucy, among other things, not allowing me time for the normal crash. It happened finally, though, not long after pulling out of school. And I've actually been in the funk ever since-at least a month. Finally, Sharon advised me to take a month of pure recreation (beyond the usual rigors of parenting, staying on top of finances, housecleaning & so on). No personal projects. No feelings of obligation. More Baldur's Gate. More movie watching. More noodling around on guitar. More excercise. More sitting around in the Lotus position, sipping hot chocolate and reading the City Pages cover to cover. I'm three days in and so far so good. We'll see if I can come out of the month recharged.

I'm not a Red Football

Well, contrary to perhaps common belief, things are not on autopilot at my job. Not sure if I give much of an impression of my job satisfaction other than this vague notion that I have an uneasy truce with "the man" until I feel I am ready to strike out into a more personally satisfying venture. Truth of the matter is that, in terms of my day-to-day activities, I actually enjoy working with maps & data (regardless of how lame that sounds). I am relatively well-taken care of (certainly in comparison to past jobs), and have about as much job security as one can reasonably expect from a large company in this day and age.

But I just had this incident occur which has pissed me off beyond belief. I've been seeking a promotion over the past year, but constantly getting the runaround from my boss. Meanwhile, two co-workers that are basically in a similar position as me (albeit with a different direct supervisor) just were promoted.

The maddening thing is that not only haven't I gotten a similar promotion, but I have been unable to even get me a concrete answer as to what would be expected of me if I want to get to "the next level," whatever the hell that would be. There's a lot of other little bogus things surrounding the situation, such as the fact that I've taken on most of the work of a guy that left the company a few months ago and have been putting in (for me) a decent amount of overtime, and that I feel a lot of work I do isn't recognized by my higher-ups because it's done in partnerships with other groups-something that others in my team don't really do. But I guess thing I really can't get is how I've been unable to get any kind of straight answer from my boss for such a long time, and then how, suddenly, these two other guys are moved ahead. I would suspect that maybe I'm not doing that great of a job after all, but I've always gotten good reviews and in every review period I make it a point to ask my boss what he thinks I can improve on.

I'm befuddled, but for the first time since working here (especially in light of my recent drop out of grad-school) , I'm seriously re-evaluating whether this is where I should be working, even in the short term. I won't do anything rash or stupid, but the only conclusion I can draw from this whole weird situation is that, somehow, this whole idea that I'm on a different wavelength than everyone else around here has manifested itself as a barrier to my advancement. That would be crazy. Crazy bad.

Anyway, I will be talking to my boss today and raising the issues point-blank. Not sure what he can possibly say that will remedy this situation, other than to promote me on the spot. I'll be sure to follow-up and post what happened, though.

Fill it To the Rim

I was just thinking, on the way into work, that this had to be about the dumbest fucking catchphrase in the history of advertising. What, exactly, were the Brim people trying to say? That other coffees were incapable of filling your mug? Or just that drinking their coffee made you pee an extraordinary amount? Perhaps their nasty, sludgy brew was in no danger of spilling. Sheesh. Plus, the whole thing just screams: "We named our company to rhyme with our slogan."

Any other ill-advised or plain unexplainable ad campaigns out there?

I guess Barq's Bites comes to mind...

The Journey's End?

So, my spiritual journey has gone from Christianity to Deism to now something like a vague sort of Theism while acknowledging I have a Christian heritage (e.g. celebration of Christmas & Easter & so on). With this heritage still having some roots in Sharon & me, we have been struggling with a few notions of church. Still feeling like we should be a part of some sort of larger, "faith"-based community, or experiencing fellowship with a group of similar souls on a regular basis. We also still have this urge to have some sort of formal ceremony of dedication for Lucy.

Anyway, we had been meaning to visit this Minneapolis Unitarian church for some time, and finally got around to it on Sunday. In reading their literature and witnessing the proceedings, it was evident this was very much a group of similar souls. People who wished to come together with a common vision of hope, and explore their spirituality with honesty & reason, seeking justice in the world and an ethically-informed worldview. In fact, upon leaving the place I remarked to Sharon that, from a religion standpoint, all the people there were almost toally in line with me, except for just one thing.

You see, they don't hate going to church.