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energy
Friday, October 9 1998
This morning I dreamed I was escaping from something, a petty crime perhaps. I ran through thin strips of humid eastern forests and across scrubby western fields until I came upon a fence along a river. There was a rip in the fence, and when I emerged from the other side, I discovered I was in Mexico. After a bit of walking I found I'd accidentally left my wallet at a fork in a trail. There was a Mexican guy sitting at the trail fork, doing nothing but guarding my wallet for me; he'd seen to it that those who had taken my money had left a $20 bill for me. In exchange for his benevolence, I gave him a dollar in coins.
I noticed on my bicycle-commute to work that I keep seeing the same people at the same places every morning. There's the thin effeminate long-haired guy on Adams Street smoking with his buddies before entering his workplace. There's the striking 30-something bleach-blond with her two blond children in front of an Adams Avenue day care center. And on Texas Street, commuting uphill while I'm roaring downhill, is the cyclist dude with the purple backpack. This morning he was at the highest traffic light in Mission Valley in a Zen state, psychologically preparing himself for the big climb, a climb that (for me) lay ten and a half hours away.
At work the desktop jungle was kinder today. There was more work to do, and I did it in a rapid, competent manner, spending less time gazing about the room at the gaudy productivity-boosting posters or letting my unfocused eyes swim over a borrowed copy of Learn Active Server Pages in 14 Days. When I wasn't busy doing real work, I found I was actually becoming increasingly adept at ASP, writing (for example) a little widget that could make a fairly accurate guess about someone's sun sign given a birthday entered in a web form.
I did a Mexican lunch with Dave, one of the SQL web developer guys. Like me, he drove out from the East with neither a job nor a place to live, and now (again like me) he's all hooked up and happy. In the course of this week, Dave and I have eaten every lunch together, which makes us fast friends. He's exactly like the kid at a new school who will deign to eat lunch with you while the others are still wondering whether you're cool enough for them.
At the end of the day, which was also the end of the week, all of us gathered together and had a community-affirming ritual, going from person to person and each of us saying who among us had given us the most "energy" during the week. It was a bit hokey and contrived for my sensibilities, like the pep rallies I didn't have to learn to loathe back in high school, but still, I have to confess I experienced a genuine boost when people gave me credit for the meager work I was able to accomplish during these first few days. As for me, I gave all my energy to Dave. The socializing we did at our three lunches together was crucial to my sanity this week.
Kim and I were so tired we didn't even manage to go out tonight.
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