Awake

I'm sick. Only moderately, I believe and hope, but I've been sick off and on for nearly a month now. It started as a sinus infection, for which I had two different antibiotics and a week off work (for the first time in recent memory). The second antibiotic did the trick on my sinuses, mostly, but left a dry cough. Last night, for whatever reason, the cough "itched" so strongly that I've now hacked my way to a murderous sore throat. Guess I'll go see the doc again.

In other news it's Spring here. Tulips are up, lizards are sunning themselves on the windowsill (and getting into the office and running around in piles of paperwork for a half hour before being persuaded to leave again). Went for a walk at the Bärensee with G and U and the kids on the weekend, 20°C and sunny.

In other, other news I'm going mad. I've lost all sense of time: it seems that the kitchen always has a pile of three or four dirty cereal bowls to be washed, meaning that three or four days have gone past since I last looked in the kitchen. Clearly this isn't so, since I had to be there to eat the damned cereal, but … I don't know. Just between you and me, I think I'm arriving at the point where I am so lost, and so worried about being lost, that I can finally admit my "failure" and ask for help.

How does one go about finding a therapist? It was easy in London in the early 90s, I had a friend who happened to be deputy head of social services for a particular borough and asked him for a recommendation; he sent me to his own therapist. Perhaps I'd have the same luck if I just asked around here, but my impression is that German society is less tolerant/respectful of psychotherapy and mental unease than England was. We shall see. I'll ask the doctor, whom I like and trust, whether he can recommend somebody.

One of the topics that came up at the retreat in October was "letting yourself be seen." This is not something that I do, my natural inclination is to dissemble and conceal — despite my blogs and Twitter and Faecesbook and whatever all else. It occurred to me in conversation with a friend in SL that, were I to kill myself, there are only three or four people in the world who wouldn't say "But his life was perfect, he was so happy." (Don't worry, I am not planning to kill myself, not even thinking about it; that was an extreme way of saying that I hide what is going on in my life.)

I'm going to start telling much more of the truth here. I'm not going to say that I'll tell it all, and I'm certainly not going to promise that I'll write regularly or even more frequently, but I'll do my best not to reply with a shaky grin and a please-change-the-topic dismissive "Just fine" whenever somebody, even myself, asks how I am.

Wish me luck.

Broken

I broke a molar two days ago, while eating a carraway seed roll. A piece of tooth the size of a small pea broke off, and is now lying on my kitchen windowsill. I'm not quite sure why I put it there, I do know that it can't just be glued back in place, but throwing it out felt wrong. (As far as I can reconstruct the events, a seed got wedged between teeth and acted as a tiny crowbar when I bit down.) It doesn't hurt, which makes me vaguely uneasy even as I am thankful.

At this point, I have to interrupt myself to give some backstory. We have two more weeks to get the tender documents written and published, and are working insanely long and hard at it. Last week set a kind of sad record: 67.5 hours at work. That amount of concentrated effort doesn't just wash off during the twelve-minute walk home downhill, not even when I see an urban fox trotting down the empty street before me at 1 a.m. as has happened twice now. Even at 2 a.m. it takes me at least an hour of tea and/or yoghurt and/or reading, to relax enough to be able to go to bed. I haven't been in Second Life in a week, I find that too strenuous after working so long and hard.

I had a great deal of difficulty getting to sleep that night, between worry about the tooth and residual stress from overwork. I lay in bed half-awake, my mind whirling in a strange paranoiac-critical state that I would not hesitate to describe as delusional if it had happened while I was awake and functional*. I found myself in conversation with the dentist, in affect not "imagining" the meeting so much as remembering something that hadn't happened yet. She said that the tooth was irreparable and must be removed, and suggested an implant.

I asked her whether it was worth all that bother and expense, "given that I am not going to be alive much longer."

Well.

That shook me awake, really awake. I was so disturbed that I considered getting up again and going online to talk to some friends who I knew (hoped) would be there. I talked myself down from the horror, telling myself it was just a moment of madness caused by overwork and exhaustion (true enough), and managed to go to sleep after a half-hour of reading.

Where the hell did that idea come from? On the one hand, I never thought that I would ever live to be as old as I am now (not that I expected to die, I just didn't think I would age), and I have certainly always lived as though life and youthful strength would be infinitely available; on the other hand, I was told by a reputedly infallible reader of tea-leaves in Boston that I would live to be 88. (She also said that I would be successful and happy but not rich, which so far is running 100%.)

And now, the punchline. Once this set of documents is finished, we'll have a few weeks' off. I was thinking about a trip to Israel, and had got as far as mailing some friends to pick dates and places. Right now, it looks like I will be giving my holiday fund to the dentist instead. Damn.


* Ignoring for the moment that one definition of being awake and functional is not being in a delusional state.

Consumerism

Being a meditation on today's Thought*

On the whole, all things considered, I feel that I am a net consumer of happiness: the world gives me more than I feel I am producing. This thought is vaguely unsettling.


* "We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than we have to consume wealth without producing it." George Bernard Shaw

Run like hell

... because we aren't going to make it. We aren't going to get the drawings done on time. I'll be very lucky if we don't have to do an all-nighter (i.e. from tomorrow into Wednesday) to get the bugger halfways ready. Forty-five hours to go.

Damn damn damn and damn.

Twelve down, eighteen to go.

Getting busy

We have three weeks left on the first competition, and therefore four-and-a-half weeks left on the second (though I will have relatively little to do with it, hopefully only two hours a week oversight and a week of half-days helping with the submission drawings). A database customer wants to hire me for a day to update their systems. The Münsters are pressing for visible results, to be submitted weekly. And to cap it all, NaBloPoMo is about to start again.

The next thirty days should be very exciting.

The odd thing about all this far-too-much is that I am relieved and pleased to have discovered just how bad it's going to be: as though, knowing the worst, I can now make plans and start dealing with things.

Cold, and more serious matters

Yes, I know that I am the one who always rabbited on about how lovely winter is and blablabla. However, there was (at least in my mind) an implicit caveat in that statement: winter is lovely in a country where the houses have insulated walls and windows that close tightly. I realized that I am sitting in a draft which is making my neck, lumbar region and ankles cold. I've no idea whether it's new this year, due to a recently-opened crack somewhere, or due to my continuing jetlag-induced tired-and-unfit-ness, or purely imaginary, or whether it was always thus and I simply never noticed before.

I do know that the radiator in the kitchen is not radiating any warmth at all, it's as cold as the windowpanes. Have to see about that soonest.

Bringing in my plants from the summer office also imported a large number of interesting and unusual insects, which I have been capturing and killing with gusto and kleenex.

In more serious news I heard about the wildfires in San Diego and vicinity by chance last night, when I happened to meet in Second Life a friend who was waiting to be evacuated from her house! To think that we had been joking about forest-fire-season in California only a day or two previously. I wish all Californian friends and readers the very best of luck, may you all survive unharmed and find your homes needing nothing more than a good scrubbing.

Interesting times

Y'all may remember that I gloated some weeks back about booking a Lufthansa flight on a train, getting all pan-Europeanishly smug about our integrated transportation services and how very clever we are.

The Deutsche Bahn will be shut down by a strike tomorrow morning, from 8 to 11am. My "flight" leaves the station in Stuttgart at 11:27, assuming that it does actually go anywhere. This could get very exciting.

I hate exciting.

There's nothing I want less when travelling than excitement. Once I arrive, yes, of course; but not during the getting there phase. I can think of nothing, really nothing, that could happen on a plane that might legitimately be called exciting, which might not just as truthfully be called "horrific" or "utterly terrifying" or "life-endangering." No no, when travelling my motto is "give me boredom, and lots of it."

We shall see.

I am about to pack and prepare for the holiday. I hope that I will have time and opportunity for a quick post tomorrow, but just in case I don't manage to: Have a peaceful and pleasant two weeks, my dears, be kind to yourselves and each other.

[Updated: in case I don't get online, here's tomorrow's Favourite and its link. Enjoy the mellowfulness.]

How's business, you ask?

Thought for the day: a business plan that includes the words "win the lottery" is not planning a business.

I've spent much of the last two days looking through online job-ads, and a disspiriting time it was too. There appears to be no market for the database toolkit software that I've spent the last five years learning. Much as people talk about continuing education and career flexibility and such, there appears to be only a tiny market for people without a computer science degree. And while the population is ageing rapidly, there is apparently no place in IT for people who are more than five years out of university.

I really don't know what to do.

Ageing Yuppie isn't answering mail or returning phone calls. I assume he wants to wait until he can tell me some good news, i.e. a job that starts "tomorrow morning," not realizing that the information "there's nothing before December at the earliest" would be nearly as useful.

The Münsters are still farting about. It appears that my contact there is only a middleman, that his company is offering translation services to someone else, and that this someone is being terminally indecisive.

G and U have been selected (drawn from the hat) for another competition, which we have already started and hope to have finished in mid-October, shortly before her baby is due. But that's like playing the lottery, I will be paid only a nominal amount (250 Euros) for my time.

I need to spend 5600 Euros to update my copy of the database toolkit to the newest version. Sales of my database and associated consultancy have earned me 2177 Euros so far this year.

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn and damn.

I shall now do the logical thing and walk downtown for a cappuccino before heading to the office for work on the competition. To leave you in a better mood, here's XKCD on romance and dating, a former ad executive who loves his job at Starbuks and nice short post by Jeffrey Zeldman on his daughter's first day of pre-school:

Nothing says Buddhism like raising a child. To cherish what has already changed as you look upon it. To hold most tightly what you must most let go.

[Updated: a kind of follow-up on the former-ad-executive story, about the store manager who hired him.]

Depressing

As I arrived at my apartment door this evening, Mrs. Neighbour opened her son's door (beside mine) and said, "Oh, Mr. Udge, I'm so worried about my son, he's in bed and he won't get up, I can't wake him up." Well, she's been wrong before, but the man has attempted suicide twice so I wasn't about to brush off her concerns. I put my coat and bags down in my hallway and followed her into his reeking apartment, where we found him asleep in bed. He seemed somewhat confused to see me in his bedroom, understandable really; I explained that his mother asked me to look in: Was he all right? No, he's caught a cold. Ah, well it's the weather isn't it, dangerous time of year; does he have vitamins and cold pills? Yes. OK, sorry to disturb, do say if I can be of assistance.

So we left him to go back to sleep, and returned to his dining room where the table had been set for Vespers (the German name for a late, light meal: bread and cheese and such). Mrs. N was still flustered and very uneasy, hadn't grasped what he had said about being sick and sleeping it off; she was still worried that he wouldn't come out to have dinner, and couldn't find the coffee pot: why wasn't it on the table? I got her to sit down and poured us both a glass of Fanta from the bottle that had been set out, and let her tell me several times how worried she was about him. Three times in a quarter-hour she expressed surprise that N wasn't at the table with us and started up to look for him; each time I reminded her gently that we'd just seen him, that he was sleeping off his cold.

After half an hour, as she was beginning to settle down, Mr. N came down to see them, expecting to eat dinner together as I infer that they usually do. He joined us in a round of Fanta and talked quite plainly about their lives and the minor Hell they inhabit. He's unable to walk any great distance; she's unable to be let out on her own, cannot navigate from their apartment on the third floor to N's on the second; N is a depressive alcoholic and is weakening physically, he too walks slowly and unsurely.

What will happen to them all? Who will care for whom? It's none of my business, except that it does affect me to see them in this way. I cannot just watch through the keyhole of my front door and pretend I'm not home. When I look at them (meaning Mr and Mrs N) I think of my parents, and hope that somebody would not turn away from them.

On self-censorship

Anyone who happened to stop by a few minutes ago will have seen a different post in this position, which I've taken down for the time being.

Although I post here pseudonymously, my identity is known to several friends—and to my sister and niece. As I re-read the now missing post, it occurred to me that what I wrote about was not my business alone but the story of our family, and that I might be spilling beans that were not mine to be spilled.

My mother (who happens to be my sister's mother, too, to avoid confusing anybody) has the habit of keeping things to herself, of suppressing news that she thinks might disturb us, e.g. the three-week delay between my father's stroke and her informing us that it had happened. My sister jokes that she always insists on speaking to him when she phones home, in case he'd died and Mom was keeping it quiet.

Moving rapidly along as I think we should, I've been in Second Life with M2 a few times now, and am beginning to see the point of it: it's like online chat with pictures. We tend to meet up in favourite places, and just stand around and "talk" for an hour or two. As we were discussing architecture last time, she took me to one of her favourites: a tree-house on the scale of a baobab, with hot tub and balconies and a dance floor. The latter are fairly common in 2L: you both click on the "let's dance" buttons, and the sim takes over your avatars to make them dance together. I found it quite amusing to watch us (note the pronoun).

And finally: L'shanah tovah tikateivu to my Jewish readers. Bless you, and the rest of us too.

On the roosting of chickens

I've just found in the pile of mail that arrived while I was in New York, a lawyer's letter informing me that my landlady has annulled our contract and wants me out of the apartment on the 31st of this month, i.e. the day after tomorrow. I've spoken to G's brother who studied law, and fear that she is legally in the right: if the rent is more than three months overdue the lease may be cancelled without notice. I shall see a proper lawyer on Monday but have no great hope of achieving more than a grace period of at best a few weeks; and even that is entirely at her discretion. Damn.

I've got to stop thinking about this. There's nothing I can do before tomorrow morning, if I sit here and think about this I'll have a bloody heart attack. Good work, Udge! Well done.

[Updated] well, it's possibly less dramatic than it first sounded. According to G's brother the process dissolves into thin air if I can pay the whole arrears plus incidental costs plus lawyers' costs within a month of issue of the demand. Which in itself suggests that telling me on the 18th to leave on the 31st is not entirely kosher, but that's beside the point. G and AY have both loaned me money against future earnings, and I have enough to pay all bills that I'm aware of tomorrow.

Still leaves me being idiot of the year, though. Damn.

Night terrors

Awake still in the dead of night, making hot chocolate amid visions of emptiness and feelings of despair. I am close to panic, though you might be excused from not having inferred that from previous posts: it's been my habit to keep these feelings dark, for a very long time.

I have not a love or a family of my own, I haven't even had the gumption to have a pet. I have no pension, no insurance, no work, no money, and no idea what to do about any of it. How fortunate that I enjoy what I do, because I'll never be able to retire from it: I must hope to die at my desk, still able to work.

I have screwed up my life so badly, thrown away so many chances—and for what? To live here, like this? Bah.

I despise myself for writing cheerful posts about work or furious rants about politics, as though those were the things that occupy my mind. I sit here all day pretending that I'm working, hunched over like a bloody rabbit on the highway, hoping against reason that the wheels will pass to either side of me.

So hit "publish" now, and don't look back. Go on, I dare you.

1984 again

Attention all Americans: George Bush has given the Secretary of the Treasury the power to freeze all your assets forever, at his (SoT) sole discretion and without the bother of presenting evidence or even probable cause. There is no provision for appeal, and anyone who assists you in any material way, e.g. by giving you food or paying your rent or representing you in a court of law, risks having their assets frozen too.

The Executive Order is framed in terms of denying material support to the insurgency in Iraq, but since the Order does not require the presentation of evidence and is not subject to judicial review or appeal, it can in fact be applied at the SoT's whim to any person, company or organization in the United States; § 1702(a)(1)(B) implies that this may apply to the American assets of foreign people or organizations too.

The original declaration is here; translated into English and commented here, further comments here and here; tip of the hat to Rana.

Write about this on your blog; then write to your Congressman and your Senators, asking them why they haven't yet protested against this egregious abuse of power; then write to your local newspaper and TV station, asking them why they haven't reported it.

Impeach the bastards now, while you still have the right to do so.

Countdown, interrupted

We are off to a fine start: my parents appear not to have a hotel reservation for the first two nights of the trip, in Bilbao. The hotel in which the rest of the group is booked has no rooms available.

This is a suboptimal outcome.

[Updated] the hotel was correctly booked but the agency didn't send a confirmation slip. Good.

Last Friday before Spain

I've noticed that the excitement leading up to a holiday often tips over into not wanting to go, and realize that I am currently approaching this point. It all seems like such an imposition; such a great effort seems to be required, out of proportion to the anticipated fun.

Why do I worry so much about such absurd things? Why do I anticipate being disappointed?

During the last few weeks I have listened often, usually late at night, to a CD that I bought a year ago and put aside as "too strange." About once a month I would play it, and each time I liked it a little better—which might be simply expressed as having understood it a little better. I have become fascinated by the work, and would love to experience a full eight-hour (!) overnight performance; for the meantime this double CD does well. (There's also a six-hour TV recording of a performance in the Temple Church, where the CD was recorded.) Today's Friday Favourite is a song from early in the cycle. It's not untypical of the whole, I particularly liked the interplay of the three bass voices with the choir. Crank this one up very loud indeed.

Shabbat shalom, my dears.

Broken

I don't know what I broke, nor where it happened, but the database is broken in Client/Server mode: a simple action that used to take one-fiftieth of a second, now takes up to twelve seconds to run. I've spent most of the day trying in increasing desperation to find the problem, without success: I've found and patched any number of trivialities along the way, but this one is defeating me.

Damn and blast.

Other than that, it's been a fine day.

[Updated at 1:16 am] well, I think I've fixed it. Perhaps. The database now starts as quickly as a version from last week that I recovered from a backup (always make backups!). To bed.

In other news yesterday's Wondermark hits close to home.

In other, other news Adam Gopnik writes in the "New Yorker" about gun control in the light of recent events.

Night terrors

Awake again at 3:30, I lay in bed for half an hour hoping to drift off, then got up to have a glass of milk and the now obligatory quick blog post.

I feel like running away screaming; except that there's nothing to scream about but my own behaviour, and nothing to run from that I haven't created with my own hands; and furthermore that running away screaming is both foolish and childish, and something of a habit.

"You were so cool back in high school, hey what happened?" © Tom Petty

You know what needs to be done, fool, so just stand up and do it.

[Updated an hour later] I've paid two months' rent, made a backup of Alberich's important bits, and shall now return to bed. The birds began singing a quarter-hour ago, though the sky is still quite black.

Thought for the day

Is it more unlucky or less, when Friday the Thirteenth falls on a Tuesday?

Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the water

Courtesy of Rob at Eine kleine Nichtmusik, here is something new to worry about. (Well, it happened on Feb. 20 but it's new to me.)

The mind boggles and refuses to believe what the eyes tell it: a 330-foot-deep hole suddenly opens up in the street? Look at the width of the hole and think how tall 330 feet is, and imagine a column of stone that size. How can that amount of stone suddenly disappear? Where did it go? Impossible; particularly ludicrous, almost insulting, is the official suggestion that recent rains washed it away. Have you ever watched a stone being eroded away by rainfall? Neither have I. Somehow it just doesn't happen.

So presumably it didn't happen. I presume that this is a 330-foot-deep cavern which has been forming since hundreds or thousands of years, and whose roof collapsed two weeks ago. That such a thing can happen is more logical than blaming it on yesterday's rainfall, but the explanation is hardly reassuring.

Do you know what's underneath your house?

In other news Noorster has found a very moving YouTube clip on fathering. See it and weep.

Awake

The birds are singing, so I could reasonably claim that this is not insomnia but just waking up early, but that the state of my body and soul indicate otherwise. Oh, I can't be bothered, there's nothing I could say now that I myself would wish to read. Go back to bed.