Day of Reckoning.

I have a story. The story starts at 2 a.m. last night and ends with me taking off my shoes, putting down my backpack, and returning to my room, all of which signifies the fact that I'm not going in to work today.

I didn’t sleep well last night. This is by no means a rare occurrence, and with the increased stress of my life’s most recent change in direction it’s something I can rely on happening 3 to four times a week. I understand the cause of it much more then I used to though. The key pattern I’ve noticed is that I can sleep well only on nights when I don’t care what’s happening the next day. Nowadays that means Saturday night. Sunday through Thursday I’m thinking about the delicate balance between work and errands, running over my finances in my head, planning future finances, and spending a fair amount of mental effort silencing the part of me that simply does not want to go to sleep at 9 p.m. On Friday I’m scheduling in my head. The time juggling that comes with having work hours that make you leave before banks open and get home after they close with the unpredictably lengthened D&D games, and the ever present need for someone to go grocery shopping.

What it all comes down to is stress. I hate to say that because I still think I have a fairly good life. Even though I’m subjecting myself to a harsh existence I have the option to pull a rip cord and hop back to Houston for a few months before I re-enter the Bauccian excess that is the American college.

Spell check doesn’t know the right spelling of Bauccian, and neither do I. Remember Baucus? Well Bauccian should be a word. If it turns I’m wrong and it isn’t get some white out and write “Hedonistic” over Bauccian on your monitor.

So, Stress abounds, sleep fails and I lay in thought. Technically I get up, read my e-mail, check out facebook, make sure nothing big has happened on YTMND, and play my Warrior on the PVP server while listening to the latest “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” podcast, and then about an hour later I lay in thought. I have much to think about. How much of a benefit would it be to get my car up here? I’ve heard rumors that there’s going to be a price drop on 360s after the holidays, should I wait? With my current financial situation should that even be an issue? Is there a place in Redmond that offers an earlier aikido class? In the philosophical debate between relativism and absolutes will you inevitably find that all absolutes are simply a mass consensus, and if that is true doesn’t the school of relativity and perception based reality declare them functionally absolutes? How can you measure the strength of a consensus? If a consensus is an absolute how does one decide who is counted in determining consensus? What is the threshold of intelligence necessary to effect perception based reality? Is stimulus response enough? Does mechanical interaction count as stimulus response? Is the Universe itself, by virtue of its reactionary mechanical nature, aware? Is this universal awareness the basis of the common perception? Is reality based on multiple perspectives determined by that which has the strongest force of will?

I went on in this grand thread for a few hours, and my alarm went off, shaking me back to the pressing matters of tooth decay and clothing, and shaking my train of thought back to the more pressing matter of finance. I went through the routine of readying myself, but I did so without any presence of mind, and shortly before I left I decided that I needed another job. I can not progress without a greater degree of freedom and I can not attain that freedom until I have the power born of economic influence. So a question arose.

Is it worth going to work today, or would today be better spent trying to find a new job?

I made my decision, and here I sit. I still have enough money in my reserves to screw around for about 2 weeks, after which things will get increasingly shaky, but I don’t plan to take more then today off anyway.

I won’t lie and say that I do this with absolute resolve. Like most things I do, I’m doing this with just enough resolve to actually get it done, but fear is the bedfellow of discovery and if I was going to do things the safe way I would’ve stayed at college. I’ve got much to do, and little to go on, but I am not deterred. I’ll let you know how things go.