September 15, 2002.
Slowly Breaking Through the Daylight

This has truly been The Summer of Work. Who would have known at the begnning of the season? It turned out to be the summer of coming home from work late, after a long day, and powering up the computer at home, and working on another project for another 3 or 4 hours. It was a season of eating a cold tuna sandwich in front of the computer, trying to avoid dropping the crumbs into the keyboard, of spending warm summer days indoors (to borrow the phrase). It was lost weekends and beautiful sunny Sunday afternoons chained to the computer, and then shuffling back in to work on Monday morning, worn out and a little grouchy, and getting back to it all over again. I don't think I put on a swimsuit even once all summer, and that's a sad new personal record.

But in a way, I'm glad it was the summer of work. I saw a side of myself I have not seen before. To be honest, I have never worked that hard. So I did not know that I could. And now the work is paying off; things are happening. We are making our last payment to the godforsaken student loan people this month, and at the end of September, we will be two happy, weary, debt-free Americans. (Well, for about a week. Then we will probably be buying a new computer, and then we will be back in debt.)

There's a certain joy in cracking your knuckles and getting down to it. There is a pleasure that comes from seeing a gigantic mountain in front of you and taking a deep breath and climbing it, and not stopping. Most of that pleasure comes from just knowing that you can do it.

I feel proud of all I accomplished this summer. Even if I did pass all of July and August with blindingly pale skin.


The Crumbling Kingdom

While I was out on my fried-internet-enforced sabbatical from this journal, several crappy things happened. (Or as my friend Karen would put it, several craptastic things happened.) Probably the thing that affected me most dramatically was that my beloved work companion, José, decided to leave our company, and start a design studio of his own.

José is a dazzlingly talented designer, and he had been considering this move for a couple of years. Still, no one really expected it to happen quite so soon. I spent the last two weeks of his time at our office, feeling like someone had slapped me across the face with a leather glove.

But already I can see that it's probably a good thing that he left. Just a couple weeks after his departure, this past Monday, the company went through yet another round of layoffs. Now it's a real game of corporate-style Survivor. We've gone from 17 people to 7 in the past two months. What does that mean? The kingdom is turning to sand, and washing into the sea. Now the seven of us, we seven ragged, grateful, and worried survivors, we are rattling around in our suddenly cavernous office, paying through the nose for premium real estate in downtown Atlanta, and we are suddenly very overworked and very unsure what's going to happen, and when it's going to happen.

On one hand, I am glad to still have a job. On the other hand, I can see how suddenly and violently the company might fold now. What to do? I've looked at the ads in the paper. I've put together a resume. But this economy is terrible, and discouraging as my job is, it's probably better than quitting out and going to the bottom of some other ladder where the people are less pleasant and the working conditions even more depressing. What to do but circulate my resume, and wait quietly, and keep an ear to the ground? For now, it's chin up, soldier, and walk on.