It is shortly after midnight on what is now the morning of Wednesday, October 13th, 2010. As usual, I’m not tired. If I go upstairs now, I will find myself playing either Minesweeper or Sudoku to tire myself out.
A one-night fling from years and years ago appears in my IM (Damn, I never discard anything) I haven’t shared words with her pretty much since that one night. I contemplate saying hello. I type into the IM window:
‘I would say, “hello.” But I don’t know if it was garner a response. And honestly I don’t know to what purpose it would serve starting a conversation.’
I don’t get more than a few characters into the word honestly; contemplate the rest of my sentence; and then discard the text and close the window.
It’s another one of those nights where I’ve been looking at legal proceedings between large companies and individuals. I’ve been reading how laws have been very carefully designed to protect the large companies from the individuals. I’m saddened by how few laws protect the individual.
This always leads me back to the pipe dream of going to Law School. This is of course pardoning the irony that Law School itself is one giant corporate machine masked in higher education and the only people that really succeed at it are the ones willing to get into bed with the large companies that are destroying the individual one-by-one.
Of course there’s also the personal limitation that to get into Law School they expect you to at least have a Bachelor’s degree, which to this day I am still blissfully missing. I wish that Education and I hadn’t had such a hate-hate relationship when I was in my 20s. I see the point now. I’m also pleased that both fields I studied in then have a more solid grounding for people with degrees now.
In college I studied two disciplines (more than any other) Theatre and Computer Science. My Theatre department was wonderful. Unfortunately, like many small colleges it was also very incestuous and driven to powerful cliques. I of course was a social ignoramus, so I fell out of the clique fairly quickly. There were also so many specific topics that I did not excel in that made me feel inferior in the department. My costuming and makeup work was second to last to none. Also, there really wasn’t a large call for Degrees in theatre in the real world. Granted, in college I also discovered that I really didn’t have the chops to pursue Theatre professionally.
I discovered that the performing arts (as well as other media) is a very cutthroat field where the manufacture of your business self often supersedes your professional self. It’s more important how you sell yourself than what you’re selling. (Art isn’t easy) And with that dripping level of cynicism by age 22, I knew I didn’t want to wait tables.
My other field was computer science. At my college this degree was an absolute mess. The chair of the department (who rumour has it has since been incarcerated) was an absolute egotistical tyrant who taught classes by giving unsolvable problems to weed out anyone he felt was undeserving in the major. Which was everyone. He actually tried to charge me for his time when I asked him for some information on a topic I wanted to pursue on my own time. (Object oriented Pascal for the interested) I was shocked at his pretentiousness and went to the Provost. She told me that not a lot of people understand her job and that she was pleased I came to speak with her. She explained that her job was to remind the tenured faculty that they were in fact mortal. The department chair wanted nothing to do with me from there.
So, with one major filled with people that I didn’t get along with terribly well (including my Theatrical advisor who told me to my face that he considered me his greatest academic failure) working towards a degree that would only help me if I wanted to pursue Dramaturgy, publishing or teaching in college, on one hand; on the other a major that was downright hostile to me because it was busy teaching the chairs pet classes that were antiquated to say the least (VAX/VMS and no compiler design classes)… I dropped out.
Amazingly in less than 5 years I would go from Welfare to a position as a software architect at a Major University.
In those 5 years I did try to return to college; I went to community college to prove I could pass a class with something higher than a C. I then went to the local university in my hometown. (Yeah, that narrows it down)… Actually I went to the Dramatic conservatory in the city first and auditioned for their directing program and got top recommendation yet wait-listed. Which is a story that could fill another huge post. The local university took me as a student in my vain hopes to complete my CS degree. Within 1.5 years I was hired on because of the information I’d specialized in on my own time.
It’s now been 15 years since that University hired me. That doesn’t count the 5-7 years of odd work I did with computers before getting hired on. Co-workers in my company often refer to me as the Sr. Guru. I appreciate that. I’ve spent a long time not just studying the technology I work in, but the company that makes it. Its business practices as well as its technology practices. I’d work for them someday; but I’ve actually come to like the idea of settling in Pittsburgh.
But despite that… no BS. I guess just a lot of BS that really wasn’t BS after awhile. And despite this, I have the AUDACITY to believe I could go to Law school, especially now that I have a family and am the primary income source. And my reason? The vain hope to help legislate to help people. This unto itself is very funny for someone who was more interested in doing theatre than the job of selling oneself. Which seems to be all that legislators are really interested in.
We’re nearing election time. You can tell this because the “them vs. us” attitude is at an all-time high. Once again issues dissolve away into spin about how, “THEIR SIDE IS EEEEEEEEEVUL” Well, let me assure you… Politicians are not EEEEEEEVUL. I’ve read “Fahrenheit-451” and “Liber Al vel Legis” Those books are EEEEEEEVUL. Why? Because they change you, they make you think, they make you better the more you take them into your life. The hypocrisy of elected officials who feel their job is to make you hate the other person more so that they can stalemate government long enough to make you hate again two years later. That’s not EEEEEEVUL. That’s not even evil… It’s just sad.
I have issues I truly believe in that come from issues championed on both sides of the aisle. By both sides I mean Democrats and Republicans. I will state that I do not believe in the current Republican Agenda which really seems to boil down to, “Vote the ticket” which of course is completely destructive to the Democrats which boil down to, “Vote with your heart”. Then there’s the tea party, which seems to boil down to, “Vote with your passion, because God decided to omit your brain.”
And all the while… the corporations take more and more away. There’s so little left. And so few who really want to change it… even fewer who actually have the power to do it.
It’s disheartening. Maybe enough for me to message someone I slept with one night years ago… Or at least get my mind churning in a direction that is better to afford sleep.
Law School, pipe dream or potential. *shrug*
Bedtime I guess.
-Night.
