Random Meanderings...

There are many days where thoughts pile up upon each other like random books in disorganized stacks before they're placed back in their proper shelves. I think these piles of books in my head are the source of my bouts of insomnia. If I don't fall behind, there are less books to put away and the faster I fall asleep.

That's seldom the case and the piles have become mountains. I'm simply adding more books than I can put away. On my luckier days, I'm able to extract the big picture books that hold the ideas to my projects and put them in a slightly less disorganized but more easily accessible pile.

More often than not, I'm caught off my guard when someone is asking what I'm thinking about, or what I want. My mouth hangs open like a gold fish, trying to grasp a singular book from a library doesn't have any of them left on the shelves. I'll grab the first pile of books near the front of my mind, letting them spill out of my arms until I'm left with one. And as luck would have it, this one random book is probably the equivalent of a harlequin romance or sensational tabloid biography -- GARBAGE!

I generally don't mind being absent-minded. I've lived my whole life not quite dialed into the program, so I'm used to lingering on the edge of "normalcy" (whatever that means). But lately, I'm feeling the impact of my part-time awareness. Mistakes that I don't usually make are starting to haunt me, my days are becoming scheduled cages of frustration, and I'm spending much of my time preoccupied with tiny things that shouldn't even register on the scale.

This is a horrible time to become complicated. One of my friends told me once that although I have the potential of feminine deception, viciousness, and ability to nurture a good grudge, my mind is essentially male (at the time, I was pretty certain he was insulting me). Fairly single minded, knows what it wants, when it wants it, says what it means, means what it says, and blunt to boot.

Man, I miss that.

A couple days ago, I had a meeting with my manager. He asked the question I always dread in these one-to-one discussions. "What do you want to do?" "Do you see anything else more you'd like to do?" I'm sure there's some proper, diplomatic way of telling your manager that you have no ambitions whatsoever without either getting fired, or shunted off to the basement with leaky pipes while you clutch your red stapler. I haven't figured it out. I guess I'm just lucky our company doesn't have a basement.

So usually I keep my mouth shut when it comes to big ideas (I'm pretty loud with everything else)...it keeps me out of the politics. But I guess that tiny, but consistent streak of pragmatism I have is also endangered, and I've opened my big mouth. No good is going to come of this. I know it. It never does. My last manager almost peed in his pants the last time I had a session like this. The gap between the present and my vision of future projects was too big, too far, too unreachable to accept, that it pretty much bordered on ridiculous.

So it's back to the stacks, for a little reorganization...or at least a wide shovel so I can at least clear a path to the shelves and some of the trashy reading material laying around. Then I can at least begin putting the books back in their rightful places. I've been reluctant to take the necessary time for me to do so...but unavoidable it seems. And since sleep eludes me, no time better than now to do a bit of spring cleaning.