2001-11-05 - 10:15 p.m.

The other side of horrible

So the view from the other side of horrible is considerably better.

I sounded like death warmed over earlier today, because I felt like death warmed over. I felt like crap on toast with a side of ass. I was *not* a happy camper. (Plus I'm still sick, and my voice sounds more like Tom Waits than it sounds like me.)

But like most of my rides on the mood swing, it felt like forever while the ride lasted, but as soon as I was back on solid ground, it seemed like it lasted only a few seconds. And it aint no E-Ticket, let me tell you what.

I went into work this morning expecting the worst. Cause, you know, that's what I do. Nine am this morning I had to demonstrate what I had for the boss-men. It took about ten minutes for them to realize that I effectively had nothing new to show since Friday. I worked this weekend, but little work was accomplished. (This is what work is like for me. Sisyphus redux. Part of the reason I hate my job.)

So I stammered something that might have passed for an excuse, and with the blood running cold in my veins, I set down to work. Fortunately, they assigned me a co-worker for the day, to hunt down whether the problems were his putting data into the database or my taking it out.

It turned out that the problems were all on my side, but the fact that he actually understands the database and was able to sit beside me and give me helpful prompts like "don't forget to breathe" (not that he was being condescending, but that that's the level of help I needed). Suddenly, many things fell into place.

For the first time in many weeks, I fell into my serious work groove. I jammed this afternoon. I cranked out a lot of work. By four I was able to go back to the boss-guys and show them a working system. There are still two nooks and crannies that are sub-optimal (ie don't fucking work) but I can skim over those for VP guy tomorrow.

I even left work a few minutes early.

So for at least another day or two, I am not in mortal fear of losing my job. Though I still wish I had my ass figured out enough to up and quit it.

But that is a story for another day.