February 4th, 2002:

After being forced into a management position at my place of employment a little over a year ago, my boss has decided that it would be beneficial for me to attend a Leadership Seminar so he signed me up without bothering to consult me first. In “preparation” for the class, I had to answer a couple questions in essay form, and fill out a silly survey of about 30 questions that will allow the people in charge of this seminar to get a better feel for what kind of person I am. Bah. The part that really sucks is that this class lasts from 8am to 5pm for the next three days (02/05, 02/06, 02/07). For most people, this means that they get three days to go to a training class and not worry about work. For me, this means I have to spend three days in a training class, and work at night from home each evening in order to make sure everything is getting done. This also means that I have to constantly leave the training class in order to call my boss after he pages me, which I am estimating will occur about 5 times each day, concentrated in the morning and in the afternoon. I am sure I will get close to NOTHING useful out of this class, and in fact, believe that it may end up having a negative result on me. I already don’t want to be in management. While I enjoy training people, I don’t like hiring, firing, approving time off, reprimanding, and the handing out of new work and new projects. My organizational skills are chaotic, at best. I do not make a good leader. At least, not in the corporate sense. I don’t want to be in management. But, regardless of how clear I try to make this to my boss, he just doesn’t understand. So… I guess I’ll be learning how to give better blow-jobs and properly apply lipstick for the next three days. Maybe I’ll get another jar of that corporate KY Jelly they handed out when I first started working here.

Sunday, after we returned from camping, I drove out to Keller to watch the Patriots beat the Rams in Superbowl XXXVI. I don’t follow football, or any sport for that matter, very closely, but I do enjoy watching the Superbowl. Part of that has to do with spending time with my family, and part of that has to do with my interest in the tactics, and ability of individuals performing under intense pressure. I also like watching the commercials.

[What is mLife?]
One thing that really irked me was the “mLife” ads. For weeks now, they have been doing TV commercials, radio spots, and billboard advertisements. These advertisements offered NO information whatsoever on what “mLife” was, or how it would affect me. They claimed that everyone would be able to find out during the Superbowl by visiting “mlife.com”. After the third or fourth “mLife” ad during the game, I decided to check it out. They were so unprepared for the amount of traffic they were getting that their webservers were not responding to requests. Why on earth would ANY company put so much money, time, and effort into such a HUGE campaign, KNOWING that they would receive ENORMOUS amounts of traffic on Superbowl Sunday (and in fact making that the ONLY method of obtaining more information), and then not have the servers, network infrastructure, and equipment redundancy to support that many visitors? That’s just plain stupid. Then, to make matters even worse, after eventually getting a response from their website, and doing a little research of my own, I found that “mLife” is merely a re-branding effort for AT&T wireless, with no new services, phones, promotions, or technical break-throughs to introduce. What a waste. I feel tricked, at best.

Just before we left for our trip, Mike, Sean and I went to Target to get camping supplies. One of the workers there continued to force a Target Credit Application form down our throats. Eventually, I explained to him that companies were more likely to loan money to Enron than they were to me because my credit is so poor. After a few more minutes of talking, I grabbed the form, filled it out, and handed it back to him, just so he would leave us alone. Some how, Target must have neglected to actually run any kind of credit check on me, as, for the first time in my ENTIRE life, I was actually APPROVED for a credit card. I only have a $200 limit, but still. We put our camping supplies on my new card in order to receive 10% off of our purchase. I joked around with the cashier about how I was getting free camping supplies because I was pretty certain I would forget to pay my Target bill. She thought I was funny… either that or she was just being nice.

Camping was more than enjoyable. While physical exertion isn’t exactly “relaxing”, the accomplishment and simplicity of such activities tends to provide a peace and a calm that is difficult to find anywhere else. The most peaceful portion of the trip occurred when I awoke in the middle of the night due to one of my limbs venturing too far out from the confines of my sleeping bag thus resulting in the rapid decrease in temperature of that limb. When I awoke, I shuffled a bit, trying to bundle myself back under the covers that were protecting me from the night air. After I settled, I noticed that it was raining lightly again. It was very dark, and the only sound that could be heard was the tap-tap-tap of rain falling on the outside of the tent. But then, just outside the tent a little further, I could hear something else. I had stood my drum up outside before I went to bed, in between our two tents so that it wouldn’t be knocked over if someone should get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Faintly — very faintly — I could hear the ping-ping-pong of rain falling on its head. It was calming… peaceful… entrancing. As if nature where playing its own little tune, that drove right to the center of my being.

I was the first one out of bed in the morning, but by the time I had returned from a short walk, Sean had gotten up and started making a fire. I volunteered to cook breakfast, which worked out well as it seemed I was the only one capable of bearing the heat of the fire long enough to actually stir eggs, flip bacon, or ladle off excess grease. After breakfast, Mike and I spent a few hours playing my guitar and drum. Unfortunately, I am sorely out of practice with my drum, and am not very well versed with songs people actually know on the guitar. Since Mike is far more musically knowledgeable than I am, he, eventually, ended up with the guitar, and I with my drum, and we just jammed for a bit. It was very enjoyable.

I also had a lot of time to talk to Amanda, which was good. I caught up on her life with Royce, and the fact that they are now broken up. It was nice to have my “best friend” back for a couple days, even though I know that now that the trip is over, she’ll go back to her life and I’ll go back to mine. I hope not… but we’ll see.

After flipping back through the pages of my paper journals, LiveJournal, and various other means of historical record keeping, I have come to one glaring conclusion: regardless of how much I have written, I do not write enough. On the days that I have taken the time to document the events of that day in detail, I have found that, not only to I leave that exercise with a greater understanding of myself and those things that I have learned, but I also find that turning back to those pages and reflecting on them from time-to-time helps to restore my faith in an idea, or provide clarity regarding a certain topic. Unfortunately, lengthy, detailed accounts of the events of my life take copious amounts of time to constrict, and even more time to edit and ensure readability and the perfectionist in me won’t allow anything less to be “published”. Unfortunately, time is not something I have an excess of. None the less, I will continue to make the best attempt that I can.