10.1.99

    It's a beautiful day. The sun is shining. The breeze has a hint of crisp fall but not too much. Winter is fast approaching and I must admit I'm not looking forward to the endless darkness and rain. Oregon in winter reminds me of a movie I saw long ago about this rainy planet. It rained all the time and the children had to get daily doses of UV rays for their health. They chided a little girl who had lived in a place with sunshine (Earth?) and locked her in a closet on the day that the sun would shine not believing that it actually would. The sun did shine for a precious few moments and the children stood blinking in the sun watching flowers bloom suddenly. We'll see how it goes.

    The office was deadly quiet today with most people working from home. Our work load has slowed to a lull and everyone is sort of waiting for something to happen. We lost a big client or, rather, we lost a big project due to no fault of our own. The client simply lost their funding and, frankly, weren't ready to begin on the project in the first place. Too bad, would've been interesting work.

    The client I've got right now has been something of a headache. It's not necessarily the client's fault but it's what they want their site to do. I'm working with a marketing/design firm to build out one of their designs. Even though they are only interested in the 4.x browsers there are still limitations in this medium. Even stylesheets aren't completely cross-browser. It's been frustrating to try and specify each pixel exactly as they want. We keep going around and around about the same issues. The worst of it is the cross-platform problems which I might just give up and do redirects of some sort. Agh. I don't even think platform sniffing is an exact science.

    This journal.

    I've been entertaining more and more the idea of closing up shop. An event recently very nearly had me deleting entirely. I slept on the emotional turmoil for a few days so I probably won't delete but I may take this underground a bit. I have other projects that I need to concentrate on in my free time. And there's just too many boundaries here. It's becoming less and less like a reflection of my actual life. You do get a lot of my thoughts and feelings that have nothing to do with my work, my friends, my family and my husband but... how accurate am I being? Not that that was ever a goal anyway. I don't pretend that you know everything about me or that this is really any sort of diary. It's not. Because I'm talking to *you* makes it not a diary. I show what I want to show and every now and then someone shows back and we have a dialog.

    I'm not uncomfortable with you. Not really. I'm uncomfortable with the people who know me, who can second guess me, who can be upset by what I write even though this really has nothing to do with them. And, it doesn't. This is all about my perspective. I don't tailor things to anyone specifically, I tailor things to me. By and large, this is a one-sided conversation. I don't feel guilty about that at all. Someone would call this online journal keeping as the ultimate in narcissism. I can't say either way. Columbine calls people who do this "escribitionists" which is something I can agree with. The why, though, is complicated. Although, simply asking "why not?" makes it less complicated, doesn't it?

    How to say goodbye? Do I promise to write... someday? Do I promise to let you know where I've gone? Delete and system reboot? This journal is only about 10% a relationship with you. The other 90% is a relationship with myself, with a nearly fictional character that is my persona. I guess the bottom line is that you either get it or you don't. Too many people don't and that makes me wonder whether I do. I think I do and maybe that's enough.

    Maybe.

    I hearby give myself a permission to take an indefinite break.