I have a huge spindle of blank CDs waiting to be written on. The activity is mundane and monotonous in a soothing kind of way. Kind of blanks the mind at a certain level and keeps the stress demons at bay.

When our boss Tea had her birthday we printed lots of David Duchovny photos and papered the room wall with them, brought in a raclette grill, ordered cheeses and sausages from Santi and a few bottles of wine, and then invited all her peers in the office for a late afternoon mini-party. Tea was as much of a friend as the others. There wasn’t much of that whole “boss” thing. I don’t know if it’s because the gap between her seniority and our skills was narrower tha the gap between me and my team now. Possible. Tea never really literally taught me anything. She simply set examples and gave a few words of tips and Kwams and I and the rest just caught on in a bit of a snap. No long drawn-out sessions of teaching.

Do I mandate too much? Could it be that my obsessiveness for what I believe to be quality work creating that gap that prevents any real friendship with my team? Am I difficult?

It’s raining. The morning is grayer today than yesterday. That probably accounts for my bit of melancholia. Today I miss the yellow room.

I went home at 9pm last night. Just spent all those evening hours figuring out how to do that darn presentation for the retail initiative. At some point I felt like I was losing it, that my brain has simply taken in enough and refused to do anymore… for the rest of my life. The old fears were gnawing at me gleefully. If I fuck-up this project will I lose my job?

Pre-birthday blues. That’s all this is. (stubborn determined look)

Finished in one sitting last night Alisa Kwitney’s The Sandman: King Of Dreams.

Lunch alone. Been a while. Made myself step out before I end up ordering McDonald’s online again. Also need some change in environment. Am feeling more relaxed now — coming from a new business prospect meeting this morning I felt lost. As in I had no idea what I was supposed to do. It’s going out on a limb and not knowing how high I am or how rocky the ground below is. Now I am more relaxed because I have reviewed my notes (deliberately I put it aside for the rest of the morning to let my thoughts settle and organize itself) and a few sensible ideas are slowly creeping in. Will still have to check with P though, and admit that I feel like this is way over my head. At this point, the age-old nightmare of being found out as a fake resurfaces in full paralyzing force.

I have no meetings for the rest of the day and I feel like I’ve been thrown splat into the middle of nowhere. Now that I have some time to myself (in a manner of speaking), I do not know what to do first. So I made a list. And the list was long. And I realize that the whole afternoon will only be able to tick off one or two items. One if I start off with the presentation sheets for the retail initiative that is to be presented next week. I am toying with the idea of working overtime tonight to catch up on a few more items. That would be my first breaking of my new year’s resolution though.

I emailed the yahoogroup for my urban sociology class asking about the exam schedules and if there will be one on the 22nd because I have been assigned to be part of the corplan advance party. That’s an extra day at the beach. Plus it means I would be settled and more relaxed when the rest of the agency arrives.

I am tempted to peek at Powerbooks before going back to the office…

So Pacey and I are on the air-kissing stage again. Which is a bit strange if you think about it because we are supposed to be working together after all and although we would only meet occaasionally does this mean we would air-kiss everytime? He is his usual self, insisting on picking me up from my desk and bringing me back. So much like old times and so not like old times. We have cauterized everything else but this eternal exchange of words and casual touches and friendly air kisses swirling about the solid unspoken Things.

We play the old game of words, the fast repartees and witty remarks. With no scores and no goals, and where no one wins and no one loses.

He promised to buy me lunch for the presentation I did. He called it a favor. Maybe he just wanted a proper excuse. So there will be nothing wrong at all.

There are no more sudden draining of warmth when I see him. He is now simply a token for a past that got caught in a dead end and never progressed to a real future. Maybe this is the resolution. A full circle. We are working together again, in the same office, retracing some of the first steps we took to becoming friends again, while ignoring the gaping absence of particular elements of the original story that have now become givens which neither of us are inclined to acknowledge. We have a relationship in a vacuum, preserved from further pain, restricted from unrecoverable mistakes. Love is of the rare and thin kind, unrecognizable, mutated, but resilient. A thin film of dust that rises to the air everytime he would break through my personal space and touch my hand, or my arm, and his breath would disturb the particles hovering between us as he repeatedly says how he missed me. We are a snowglobe pair. Only there is no snow but a vast expansive desert of dry heat and dry cold.

As it always happens, reading Neil sends me wobbling over the hazy edge of hard reality. I get all fluttery like a fairy’s wings and all pumped up with some kind of hope that taste suspiciously of magic dust. Reading him is like braving a calm still sea, wading into the glassy surface, knowing that beneath the reflections lie something else that breathe and move and may choose to grab your legs on a whim. I often get grabbed and I fall way in over my head, and I breathe in the water as salty as the tears shed over an unrequited love.

Then I surface again and it would be all like a dream and no one would have seen me go under and my clothes are quite dry and my feet have not even moved and the sea was all just in my mind.

When I come back from these eye-blink traveling I suffer from a bit of jetlag and everything acquires a sheen of unreality and lack of real urgency. Like the meeting I am supposed to have tomorrow morning is of pale consequence to the marvels far out there at sea. Dreamsand on my lashes. My eyes water with longing.

I will be thirty-three in seven days. But somehow it feels like I got stuck somewhere around twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

I am touched by a slight fever today. I believe it’s the token ill wind before one’s birthday. I always get a little bit sick the few weeks before the day. Almost like bits of my self are dying before renewing itself again.

Thirty-three seems so far away. Like my body is getting ahead of me while my mind and my spirit linger in more youthful pursuits. I still do not dream of marriage, nor of having children. These things bear no significance to me. Right now it is enough I have a companion I can trust more than other wives can trust their own husbands.

One of the monologues had to do with school and the incessant question of why am I really doing this? And what’s keeping me in it. Especially when I could hardly balance the homework with the workload. And a part of me keeps on telling me that I could, in reality, get on without the degree or the additional courses. I know it’s true. I could wing it somehow through my career, without really having to go through the extra education. Except that I feel that I need an added edge. Because when bright young people start to break into your dayjob you need to stay a step ahead. Now why is this important to me? Why should it matter? Because I want to continue to justify what I’m getting paid. Because I know that I could just breeze through my job and fake it the rest of the way except that I won’t be able to look myself in the eye. Because I want to be authentically good in what I do.

Because I am still in search of that elusive path to everlastingness, and for all I know a part of the path lies along the way I am treading now, this dayjob. Because I always feel the need to evolve, to grow. I am terrified of being stagnant. Of being complacent. To be drained of new ideas and to lose the capacity to see through more than a single perspective.

I want to be grounded in theories. To understand the boxes before I break out of them. To be an informed rebel and not simply a rebel for rebellion’s sake. The last thing I want is false wisdom. Because although experience is the best teacher, a good teacher can help direct you to the best kind of experiences.

I am terrified of failing. What if I fail the comprehensive exams after I’ve completed all my subjects? What if I fail the thesis? It is a humbling experience to be in school. Especially when one has reached a certain level of achievement in the working world. At the same time it is now a fair game. I bring into the classroom a wealth of real experiences, actual events instead of hypothetical, imaginary examples. Teachers speak a lot about applications to the real world. Well here is the world, fresh and still warm. Now what do the dead wise men say? All those overthinking men and women in the past centuries who have churned out books attempting to explain life and society and humanity. How valid are they now, in this world where nothing of what they knew remain? I need to know.