Dat Ol' Stress Debbil Again
Nope, the stress doesn't have to do with work, although I did start writing my review today (has to be finished by Monday), and I did start moving (a little) on preparing for Epic's User's Group Meeting. But I also got several logs passed to go into User QA, and uncovered an insidious little bug (of my own making, alas) while doing some of that testing.
So mostly things have been moving fairly well on that score. Although I think back to the last time I was pretty happy with how my job was going, and I have to wonder, "What's going to happen this time?"
A pessimist is someone who thinks the glass is half-empty, and that it contains cyanide, not merely water.
Biking in today - with three days off, due to the long hours I put in on Wednesday - was a little rough, mainly due to the humidity, but I managed to bike from my apartment up the first two (of three) Death Hills without taking a rest. I was pretty happy about this. I did take one rest, but usually I take two, so that was progress, as well. And the ride home was as easy and fun as always, except for getting stuck behind a dreadfully slow car on my favorite hill to zoom down.
I even managed to sit down and finish Tim Powers' Last Call tonight. It's an eerie book. I don't like it as much as The Anubis Gates, mainly because Last Call is not as tightly plotted, and some of the mystical elements become a little too esoteric and ill-defined for my tastes. But the well-defined magic I did enjoy, as well as the sense of gradually pulling out victory from a "Better to commit suicide than to see this through to the end" situation.
The ending was a little disappointing in that it ends right at the point at which our hero wins (and even he doesn't really understand how he pulled it off). There's no denouement, and the hint of what's likely to come afterwards isn't quite as good as actually telling (or showing) us a little of what did happen. Last Call is a sort of dark fairy tale, but modern fairy tales can't quite get away with "...and they all lived happily ever after."
The Anubis Gates, on the other hand, had exactly that sort of closure, having set it up well in advance, and having carried it through to its logical and satisfying conclusion. That's another big part of what makes it a better book.
But I still enjoyed Last Call enough to want to read more of Powers' stuff.
(Incidentally, it seems that William Ashbless - a pivotal character in Anubis - was a real person. At least, some of Last Call's chapters quote from him as if he were, alongside people who really are real. Hmm. I suppose with a modicum of effort I could find out for sure.) (Actually, I later found out that this is not true; Ashbless is an entirely fictional character.)
Oh, yeah, and all the students are really, truly back in town, and moving into their dorms this weekend. Ack!
And I keep telling myself that there's not really anything to worry about, because things will pretty much work themselves out one way or the other, and although one way might be what I want and the other isn't, really neither way is particularly bad. At worst I'll meet some people and eat some food and spend some time with a friend, and it's all in a situation which is pretty isolated from every other element of my life so the risk is really pretty low.
But rationality never really helps with feelings like this. It's the whole butterflies-before-giving-a-speech feeling. I guess to some degree it involves overcoming the flight-or-flight instinct (mainly the 'flight' part!).
But, I can get a good night's sleep tonight and just go through the experience tomorrow. It's just nerves. I've faced this before.
I sure wish it got easier with practice, though.
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