Christ, I wish I could marshall my thoughts enough to post something coherent. I just keep wanting to post songs that have the feel of the moment. I’ve started to post Richard Thompson songs, Be Bop Deluxe songs, Miles Davis songs, Graham Parker songs, and several more I can’t quite recall.

What I really want though is to post my own words, and they’re just not… coming… together…

It’s just been a bitch of a time since the new year; so many little or not so little things have gone wrong or needed attention or consumed my time and energy. I have a list of shit that needs doing that just gets loner and longer, and the things I want, like writing, like taking off from work here and there to appreciate the beautiful things, like just catching my breath, are off the fucking table completely right now. I’m having to steal minutes for myself, not hours.

Work is a fucking pressure cooker. we’re working on some new product or other (and as usual, no, I don’t know what it is, and if I knew, I couldn’t say, and if I told you, I’d just have to kill you), and it’s one of those projects where we need eighteen months to do it, so are asked to do it in three. My team, being the support-and-infrastructure people, have to deliver everything from new internal web sites and wikis to CAD tools and licenses to new machines, to new development methodolgies, and we have to do it yesterday. We’re all spinning and the work, the real design and engineering work, hasn’t even started yet.

I feel like I ain’t had a day off in three months, and I’m not seeing the end of this when I look forward. My team went into this short handed by three people and have effectively had our workload doubled.

I am, how you say, a bit stressed.

But what bothers me is that I can’t tap into the creative center to even express it. I’m just bitching here, and I don’t want to bitch. Bitching-blogs are a royal bore (almost as bad as how-great-is-my-sex-life blogs). In the past I’ve been able to get angry and I can’t even work that up for any prolonged rant. I wind up with low-grade irritated rather than that big seething angry that I can channel into sex and violence. THAT makes me feel better, this, I just wind up fed up with myself.

Feh.

Seems I’ve pretty much given up blogging.

I could claim it’s for lent, but I’ve given religion up for lent.

In fact though, it has more to do with time than with anything else. Work has become a fuckin’ whore, a new project starting up, a new team in lower-middle-upper-management and a re-org, bringing with it a sea-change in priorities that switches direction as often as a witched-up wind.

We’re short of hands and long on tasks, and the hoped-for new staffing is still a dream, not even a hope.

I’ve tried to work up the energy to be creative, or even communicative; it’s not coming, aside from a burst of inspiration in a blog comment or other. In truth only minor moments of joy are getting me through the day without my head exploding.

Little things, like the ipod jack that came stock in my truck, finally letting me choose my own music and getting me playing several bands I hadn’t listened to in a while.

Little things like the ring I’m due to get any day from my pal Carlos at Sinners Inc.

Little things, like watching firefly with my daughter; she’s old enough to get the sci fi now, and old enough to handle the more adult moments, without understanding jokes like I’ll be in my bunk. Plus, no one else appreciated the fact that I own the exact same bowie knife Jayne carries (including a replica of the sheath) quite as much as Olivia did.

Little things like looking out my east-facing window and seeing winter turning into spring, and knowing that way lies better things and better times.

Little things that make the day better. Shiny, as they say on firefly. Shiny little things.