No, I didn’t run off today and play hookey. I didn’t go get tattooed or blow work off to go drink beer or ride my motorcycle in the blue blue sunshine.

I didn’t even blog much.

Instead, I worked. Or at least tried to, though I’m finding concentration hard without a day off. Somehow this many straight days working doesn’t play like it did when I was in my twenties, when I could do 12 hour days seven days a week for months and still go out drinking at night. And work well, and hard.

Meetings, and shell scripting, and the usual users with problems who need help right now but can’t describe the problem; that’s my day. And tech support for newly mac’d friends, which is the good part. I wish I could get paid to only support people I like.

Now that the sun’s out, finally, I’m immediately taken with the desire to get out, to be outside, to feel the sun. It’s suddenly so much harder to get anything done when out there is so stunning, warm and clear. I think about sailboats and sunny shorts and being deep under water, and it’s oh-so-hard to care about work. Daydreams rule me when it’s like this. It makes me want to run, and it also makes me want to write. I’m having ideas for stories again after months of not really feeling inspired, but as always I run into the time shortage that rules my life. I have to go do something all the time. A day, a week, a month, does not contain enough hours to manage all the things that must be done.

Maybe I could give up sleeping.

No, I’d rather give up working.

I had a daydream today about asking the chef at my local sushi bar for a job. I have the knife skills, easily. I know my way around a kitchen, I know sushi (if you knew sushi, like I know… Sorry.) I can do the whole shtick, the shouting and bravado. Man, how much simpler things would be, fun fish and drink with customers all evening. I can make a killer spicy tuna, and poke that tastes just like you get in Hawaii. Who cares that I’m not asian, man, I can do this. I wonder if they’d let me work in a kilt. It makes me understand the temptation my friends have to get the fuck away from computers, to do work where they’re not sitting down all day. I’m not made to sit still this much, not made to do work that’s so abstract. I need to do something that makes a difference now.

Instead, I’m going to go write another shell script. ‘Cause someone has to.