It's not so nice outside that I would care to wander the streets during my lunch hour. Having brought my lunch to work, but neglecting to bring both my camera and knitting, meant that my mid-day break would be quiet and involve idle rambling on the internet. I did venture away from my desk for a short while, heading up twelve floors to join Aryn for lunch in his leafy cube with views of the north east. He has a nice little home up there. It's sort of like flying first class compared to my economy cubicle. He's got real plates, cutlery and seasoning. He has photos up on the walls and maps and books and an aquarium. My office has none of this. I'm wedged into a desk that's falling apart. I have a single poster on my wall and an assortment of mismatched desk accessories. We're supposed to be moving over the next month and I don't think it's worth it to set up shop here if I just have to move it all again. The extent of my nesting involves a little case with hand lotion and hair elastics. I'm saving myself for the next office. Perhaps lonely lunches like these won't be so bad once we move. I'll bring some photos with me and personalize my space. Perhaps I'll be near a window that doesn't look out towards a blank wall. If not, by then spring will really be here and I'll go for a walk at lunch. I'll search out green grass and make it my own.

I'm positively at the edge of my seat this afternoon. All of my projects are complete but due to the nature of the beast, I have to scramble to fill this last hour and a half of my day. Which poses the question about productivity at work. Not every job has a steady stream of things to be done. I don't work in a factory or some shop where if there is time to lean, there's time to clean. I'm a pencil pusher most of the time... and on really good days I'm paid to use my brain in interesting ways. However, when things are a little slow and I'm wishing that the day was over and I could be working on something just for me (for example, finishing the cardigan I'm knitting or being outside in the sunshine taking photos)I'm always reminded of this essay that I read some time ago. If you're interested in rethinking the way we work give it a read. It's long, but it has some very valid and interesting arguments.

A little while ago I took my personal photography site offline (or rather I told my friend who was managing it for me to take it offline). He still owned the domain name and emailed me today to see if I wanted to take it over. I figure I should probably do something, revamp the site so it is more current (not that I am really pursuing photography professionally these days), maybe put up more of my architecture shots. Thinking about this has made me wonder what I will do with this blog. I've often considered whether I should move it to my own domain or switch to wordpress. I might just revamp the template again, since there seems to be some problems with posts that I've added directly from flickr (at least from this antiquated browser once I move into the archive pages the text size begins to decrease to the point that it is completely unreadable). I don't know though. This site is ho-hum and doesn't generate a lot of traffic. Maybe I'll just export all of the posts and make a book on blurb and then retire from this blogging business. I do have another project that I've been dabbling with recently. Perhaps I should turn more of my attention there. Oh, I don't know. I'm fond of this little chunk of internets I've carved out for myself here.

Some people take coffee breaks. I take a break to visit my neglected blog. It's Friday, the end of week two of gainful employment. All things are well. I've received necessary training to add to my responsibilities (I am now a certified content author, joining the ranks of some 200 others) and I've made some useful contacts that will perhaps lead into an exciting new project that would allow me to flex my intellectual muscles and demonstrate some real communications savvy. However, I am experiencing a mixture of skepticism and hope. My position is a temporary one and I am only guaranteed employment until the end of July. So time is tight. In order to get things done I have to be aggressive and well prepared. I have to work hard to turn my ideas into actions. I am being intentionally vague here, but I can't and won't share any more details. At least not yet.

In light of this summer deadline that looms before me I am both focused on the present and concentrating on what's next. I have tentative plans in case my job should not continue, but the plans that involve me staying in Edmonton do not really excite me all that much. I am capable of more. Over the past couple days I've been considering more courageous change (thanks to the renewed confidence I have working in a job where my initiative and ideas actually seem to be valued). Again, I'm being intentionally vague here (which will no doubt lead to some curious phonecalls from my mother who always thinks I'm hiding from her), but only because I have the habit of sharing too much. Despite my desire for a relatively simple life, I do dream big. Not big in the sense that I have these grandiose plans of some high-powered life, but big in the snese that when I do something it usually involves some significant changes to my life. Whether or not those changes actually happen... well I'm not making any predictions just yet.

In other news I've been feeling pretty great recently. I'm sure the job is part of it, but physically I'm much more refreshed and any periods of woe have been relatively short lived. In fact I've been positively cheerful. Although this morning's snow is no indication, spring is actually here. Perhaps my mood is reflecting that.

I apologize for the lack of images to accompany this post, but my internet permissions have not yet been adjusted and I can't access flickr (access which I do require for work purposes). Soon though. It has been officially promised to me. Like with so many things in life, change is a comin'.

I often wonder about people and their aspirations. Do they dream big or dream small? Are they concerned with making a big splash, having whale sized ambition... or are they interested in more ordinary successes, performing small acts that might someday amount to being remembered even by a few as a great person.

I suppose that we all have the occasional dreams of fame, fortune and influence, but celebrity is fleeting and what we perceive as real influence is not always so. Sometimes our opinions are popular because they speak to the current trend of collective thought. The underpinnings of our ideas already exist and we just happen to communicate them more loudly then others.

Is it important that your impact on the world be widely known and you be recognized for all that you do? Or do you prefer a quieter, more intimate success? For me, a smaller and more ordinary existence seems to be the more realistic choice. I want to be influential, but I don't think I mind as much if that circle of influence has a smaller circumference than some.

For all the huffing and puffing I was doing today about trying to engage in the real world, look at me here now, doing just the opposite. I'm venting online, to no one in particular. But that's the beauty of these tools, you have the ability to share with an anonymous audience (well mostly). You can say things you wouldn't ordinarily. You can embellish how you want others to see you. This information trickles out slowly, to be discovered at some later date or finding its way into some RSS feed of friends and strangers. Some people know the real you and make inferences as to why you have written what you have written, but those strangers, all they have are the bits and pieces of the trail that you have left for them. Who you are is entirely a construct of what is stored on the internet. It's fascinating how these tools can serve the dual purpose of providing another outlet for interaction with those who know us and establish us as caricatures of ourselves to those strangers who might come across our online identities. And that's why I like the internet. Sure there are times when you feel like you're living two lives, one online and one not. But what if you feel that the real you is a hybrid of the two? I am no less false online than I am in person, but neither is more real than the other. That's something to say about my generation I guess, our outlets for expression have expanded to this abstract plane of information and we can be equally concerned with how people perceive us there. In fact, sometimes it is easier to express ourselves online. The rules are different here. I doubt people could handle this much intensity face to face.

A tutor who tweeted tried to tutor two others to tweet. Said the two to their tutor: "Is it harder to tweet or to tutor two to twitter?"

One of my brothers used to joke that my laptop was like an umbilical cord to the world. That was probably at the height of my flickr addiction (which hasn't really waned that much)and also when I was living in the north and didn't have too many people around that I cared to socialize with regularly. I was very conscious of the amount of time I spent online, but it was valuable time. I learned so much about photography from the people that I interacted with online (most indirectly) and I used my online interactions as a way to extend into the real world. Between flickr, facebook, ravelry, RSS, various blogs that I half-heartedly post to, my online world is pretty rich and time consuming. Recently I set up a twitter account (for the second time since I set one up a long time ago and then deleted it instantly when I decided that I didn't want to make the time for it). I feel a bit lacklustre about my decision to tweet. I'm really only doing it to observe what else goes on. Twitter has seen a real boom recently and everyone and their dog seems to be posting status updates. It depresses me a little bit that this whole micro-blogging phenomenon has taken off the way it has. It's all about headlines. It's all about parsed down information that we can scan quickly. Why are we so obsessed with speed and succinctness? It must have a lot to do with our desire for instant gratification. When we experience something we want to post about it instantly. We want others to know what is going on as it happens. We want to achieve synchronicity in an asynchronous environment. Twitter has been described as the modern-day telegraph, except we are our own telegraph operators. But I feel at odds with this desire to be everywhere at once. As much as I want to share with others what I am up to, I think it is important to make sure that I am fully experiencing the moment. It is probably best that my cellphone is as cheap as they come and I limit my use of the SMS functions to texting friends. I don't access the internet via cellphone, I don't post photos in real time to flickr, I don't text status updates to facebook or flickr. Although I am fond of all of these tools, I'd rather be spending more time with people in the real world. If they want to know what I'm doing, what I'm thinking, how I'm feeling - well they can turn to face me and ask. Or they can wait until they go back to their computers and see what I've posted to flickr.

I think I will muse more about this subject in the days to come. I'm going to put pen to paper on this one.

A very good friend of mine moved to Vancouver yesterday. The news of his move did not come as a surprise but the rate at which he departed has been a bit of a shock. I've endured people moving away many times before, but this move has affected me much more than I would have ever anticipated. So today I am musingly sad as I ponder what the departure of one friend means to my life.

I haven't blogged for some time now.

I suppose I've been busy knitting instead.