Friday, June 09, 2006

look at me, dreaming of you

I'm still beyond exhausted, because I started reading a book when I really should have just gone to bed. It's 11:45pm, which isn't exactly late, and it's an indication of my exhaustion that I was able to put a book down unfinished before midnight. I'm reading 'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman; I had intended to read it in America, but I returned Claude's copy to her when we parted ways, and so I bought a copy here instead. It has that combination of the absurd and the mundane that I love, and that I tend to find in all of the books that tug at my heartstrings and imprint themselves on my memory ('One Hundred Years of Solitude', anything by Murakami, 'Sunshine', etc.). I'm not finished yet, but when I am, I'm sure I'll write up an appropriately-lofty postmortem.

Anyway, I made it into work by nine today, which was something approaching a miracle. I also stayed at work until seven, which was not absurdly late given my usual leaving times, but was absurdly late given the fact that it's a Friday and I've barely slept this week. I went to the neighborhood Spar (like a convenience store without gasoline), looking for dinner, and found tortillas, canned refried beans, precooked chicken, cheese, and some weird salsa. It's an indication of how desperate I am for Mexican food that I was excited about the prospect of reheating some beans and chicken and putting them in a quesadilla. To continue using my favorite turn of speech for the evening, it's an indication of how hungry I was that, when confronted by the fact that the tortillas were somewhat moldy (possibly because the packaging said 2/10/2006, which the Spar probably thought was 2-Oct but was really Feb-10), I decided to cut off the moldy bits and proceed as planned. It hasn't killed me yet, and it was delish for what it was, so hopefully I'll survive.

I'm not going anywhere or doing anything this weekend, other than working. I'm meeting Darragh at 10am to work on our project, and if I get lucky we'll be productive enough tomorrow that we won't have to come in on Sunday, but I'm not holding my breath.

It's going to be a highly hectic summer, since I'm going to South Africa, driving my car back to California, finding an apartment, possibly going to India for a weeklong team summit (guess who craftily proposed that?), going to a couple of weddings, and coming back to Dublin for a few weeks. But, I'm looking forward to it, and I'm especially looking forward to spending time with friends. I'm not precisely homesick; I'm too busy to be homesick, and I like what I'm doing here. Rather, as I believe I've mentioned before, I just don't have any of that magical 'work/life balance' that one is supposed to strive for. My circle at work has become extremely tight; I was notifying key people of the dates of my South Africa trip, and realized that my absence will only affect half a dozen people, which was a little disheartening. Outside of work, I only tend to see Matt, my roommate, and a couple of people from the office. In Berlin, I naturally hung out with the people I work with the most, which meant that I spent all of my time drinking with the three people who sit within six feet of me, and some of their friends (which includes Matt, conveniently enough). As another example, I'm meeting Darragh tomorrow morning, and I'm so tired that that may be the only 'socializing' I do all weekend. It's not really socializing at all, since we're meeting in the office to work, and even though I like Darragh a lot, it's a little rough that we have to spend the weekend working together, since I sit three feet from him all day every day, unless I'm having a meeting with him in a conference room where we can sit four feet apart, just for a change of scenery. Note to anyone from work who may read this - I'm not complaining about Darragh, I'm complaining about the fact that I work too much. But, despite the claustrophobia that I'm currently feeling, I'm sad that I'm leaving here in less than three weeks; my social circle may be small, but it's intense, and I will genuinely miss these people when I'm gone.

Therefore, it will be nice to get back to my other friends and pick up the threads of my other life, even if I will have to travel a lot over the next few months. At least my old friends don't work with me, even if I sometimes wish they did, and even if they make a habit of inviting themselves to lunch a couple of times a month. I may still be working just as hard when I get back to Cali (and possibly harder, if I'm always making up for traveling), but at least when I go home or go out, it won't be with someone from my office, unless I want to make social plans with people from the office. I guess I'm going stir-crazy because I'm lacking choice, and I tend to flip out when I'm not in a position to make decisions about what's going to happen to me. I'm a huge proponent of free will, with all of the danger and consequences that comes with it, and so I tend to feel trapped when I'm in situations where there are no choices. That could be why I'm a disaster when it comes to committed relationships, but that's a whole 'nother story. I think that, rather than pursue a continued monologue on this matter, I would be much better served by going to bed!

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