Didn’t get a chance to blog until now because I was busy all afternoon.

Working! Well, work-like activity. Mostly something for which I will not get paid, but it was kind of fun and I feel good for having contributed for once.

It was for the text companion gig. My boss needed someone to do a run-through of how the whole system was going to work and I was her chosen victim sacrifice volunteer.

So I spend most of the afternoon with her, trying stuff out and hitting stumbling blocks and getting stuck in stupid ways (mostly my fault) and generally doing all the shit you have to do to get a brand new thing up and going.

There’s always problems you did not and could not have forseen, and all you can do is keep plowing away till you have cleared all the roadblocks away.

There was the password that ended in an exclamation mark. I did not realize this. The password was presented to me, over and over, as the last thing in the sentence and I just thought my boss was being super enthusiastic.

Then there was the very finicky system that we are using to organize the chats and such that took forever and completely logging out then closing and opening the browser to make do what it was supposed to do.

By the way, check out the name of the service we are using for this project.

Trumpia?? TRUMPIA!?! What the fuck kind of name for a service like enterprise SMS management is that? It might as well be Hitleria, or Stalinadon, or Castrotown.

Actually, that last one might be an upper class gay club, so scratch that one.

When I saw the name, I said “Seriously? That’s the name of it?”. She did not reply.

And now I desperately want to know if our clients will ever see that name. It could make things very weird if they can, whether they hate the guy or are wrong. There’s no reason they should be able to see it. It’s not front-facing software, I don’t think. It’s more like a server program that handles things behind the scenes.

But even so, the name makes me nervous as hell.

That horror aside, once we got everything going, it was time for me to be put though my paces as the test pilot for the whole companion program.

And it was then that I ran up against a problem that I have come across before, and that’s the hard truth that if someone asked me if I am good at following instructions, if I was brutally truthful, I would have to say, “….kinda?”

I always seem to miss things. I try to follow them to the letter but no matter how hard I try, I end up either missing a vital step or completely misinterpreting one.

And I have no defense for that, other than saying my brain is fucked up in general and I’m lucky that I can still dress myself.

So I can be kind of frustrating to teach. I am so bright and eager and yet I keep having to be reminded of things and screwing up in eye-rollingly inane ways.

I guess this is where I say that it is a good thing that I’m cute and charming. Otherwise someone would have killed me by now!

It’s also a good thing that I know that I will be good at the actual job and that all the complications and whatnot will be a thing of the past before I know it as long as I hang in there long enough to get the hang of it.

Everything always seems too complicated and impossible at first. That’s because you are dealing with it all as unprocessed information. Given time and practice, the mind condenses the important information and boils off the rest and suddenly everything seems much clearer and easier.

And all you have to do is keep trying.

I feel like I am discovering a lot very trite truths lately.

Oh, and today I realized I actually have three gigs now. The first two – text companion and fiction in test messaging form – you already know about. But I also have this gig writing articles based on research they supply.

Sounds like a dream come true, doesn’t it? For me at least. I haaate doing research. Having someone else do that for me is boffo.

However, that gig is not as good as it sounds because it only pays USD$6 an article. And the articles are supposed to take around an hour to write.

And I ain’t workin for no $6/hour. Even with the exchange rate, that wage sucks. It’s well below minimum wage, and that’s just plain not enough for someone with my training and talent. So unless I can get good enough at them to do two an hour, I might not keep that gig at all.

After all, I have two others!

Mostly, though, it just feels good to be busy. This afternoon was somewhat exhausting, but I was glad I did it because I feel more alive and fulfilled and legitimate now.

Besides, being exhausted is awesome one you actually stop moving. You get all languid and relaxed and possibly sleepy and, with the right attitude, you can mellow the fuck out and rid yourself of some negative tensions.

With the right attitude, you can do anything. Another profound and trite truth. I’m starting to feel like the dumb guy in a comedy who take a hilariously long time to get the joke.

Being is detinitely a superior mode of existence and the obvious choice for how to move forward with my life. Fuck all that video game nonsense. That was only ever a way to pass the time and I have ways to do that which pay money now.

From now on, afternoons are for working and video games are for relaxation and entertainment, not life-killing distractions that keep me safe from reality at the cost of crushing the life out of me.

I still have the rest of my waking hours to indulge in my distractions.

And who knows, maybe some day I won’t need them at all.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.