LittleWyvern.com

I am about ten pages from the end of The Pit, and to be honest I should be reading it write now. Very quickly, although I was critical of the first half of the book I'll admit that the second half picked up the slack. I nearly missed my bus this morning while reading at the bus stop. The bus stopped and it wasn't until I heard the squeak of the doors that I even realized it was waiting on me. Riding the train home from work I actually missed my stop because, with only 30 pages left, I forgot where I was. It worked out well, though. I had to wait another ten minutes to catch the next train heading back towards the city, that and my bus ride knocked out about twenty pages.

Work today was an ordeal. For lack of a better metaphor it was a rollercoaster. I walked outside my apartment in the morning to see the bus go by, so I had the maximum amount of wait for the next one. My bus arrived at the train station just in time to watch my train leave, so I had the maximum wait there too. I ended up getting to work around 10, a half hour later than I expected, and a good hour later than I probably should have. It didnt put me in the greatest mood. Yesterday I completed work on the SpiritCrusher… finally. I announced to Adam and the various PMs that 'it is done.' The news was received with much fanfare, only moderately tempered by the feeling of 'about fucking time.' This morning we moved it from our development servers to the live servers and as expected nothing worked. An hour or so later everything was cool. It's hard to convey the sense of relief I feel knowing that tomorrow I don't have to work on that project anymore. You probably know the feeling, we both recognize it's awesome effects.

At lunch I headed over to the DePaul bookstore and bought a mechanical pencil and some lead. I waited in a long line of students buying books, only to ultimately arrive at the cashier and pay with a pair of one dollar bills. Even the wait didn't bother me much though, I anticipated the circumstance and had brought my book. Yesterday at lunch I was in the same bookstore and managed to find a really sweet leather-bound journal. Combined with my new pencil I find myself with an impressive literary arsenal. While the walk did me some good, by 1 o'clock I wanted to leave the office. After eating my lunch I went back to my desk and stared into space for a good half hour. I couln't bring myself to actually work. Whenever I tried to focus on my screen I just as quickly found my eyes blurring and mind wandering. I spent a few minutes inventing excuses for why I needed to leave, knowing that even without an excuse nobody would stop me if I simply stood up and walked out. I began planning tomorrow, a day I had every intention of taking off from work. For about an hour and a half there was no place I could imagine which I did not prefer to where I currently was. I imagined how expensive it would be to live in other cities and what sorts of jobs I could take and still make rent. When I couldn't in good conscience waste any more time doing nothing I made my way over to the elevators and took a short ride to the lobby and made a quick left into a tiny convenience store. Peanut butter M&Ms and a pack of Juicy Fruit is apparantly all I needed.

Work throughout the afternoon went smoothly, although not as quickly as I had hoped. Having finished work on SpiritCrusher I was assigned a task with, of all our clients, the exact same law firm. After all, it's fresh in my mind… I know it best. Super cool. Suprisingly, despite the crappy mid-day I finished out strong. The new project had been estimated to take 8 hours. After reading the task and investigating a hunch I went to see Adam at his desk. I explained my theory about how we could approach this particular problem and after a few minutes he seemed intrigued and told me to run with it. An hour later, after most people had gone home and the rest were packing up, Adam stopped by at my desk for one last check in before he took off.

“Well, how's it going?”
“It works. I just finished it.”
“Fantastic!” and he broke out a smile.

My idea turned out to be a good one and I finished 8 hours of work in less than 1. Adam went over to speak to one of my PMs and they both seemed pretty excited. They later explained to me that because I had finished the project so quickly that the difference between estimated and actual hours actually made me by far the most productive member on our team in quite a while. I thought it was kinda funny, considering how I had felt only hours before. Scott, one of the other developers on my team, called over half-jokingly “Good job, making the rest of us look bad…” Everyone seemed happy when I left, myself included. Well, I suppose I wasn't happy. At least I was pleased with myself; the pride I feel when solving a puzzle or saying something clever. I left work feeling glad I hadn't walked out afterall and content with knowing that tomorrow's plans for ditching had been foiled. The feeling won't last and I can't say for sure I wont need to will myself to work once again, but today, at least, is over. Now I can go collapse into bed, finish my book, and use my new pencil to write for a bit in my new journal.