Mixed Bag

My day started a bit after midnight. I wanted my stomach to digest the fajitas I'd eaten for dinner. My stomach disagreed. This was exactly as fun as you'd expect.

I let myself sleep in a little to make up for it. I generally wake up earlier than I really need to because I'm not crazy about rushing around to start my day. So I took advantage of the extra time this morning, because I figured better to get a little more rest than to have a leisurely start to the day. This turned out to be a good decision.

Work was nothing too interesting. I learned that thanks to my new schedule, I will be once again reporting to Ben. I toyed with the idea of quitting, but decided to talk to my current manager about it instead. He's always been honest with me and treated me fairly and with respect, and I appreciate that. He let me know that my brutally unfair annual evaluation wasn't actually Ben's fault: their boss had decided any manager put on a warning during the year was automatically not meeting standards, regardless of any and all other considerations. A lousy policy, and inconsistent with the way we write our employees' evaluations, but there it is. Not actually Ben's doing it all.

So I felt a little better about going back to Ben's team after that. Not a lot, but it's something.

I haven't heard yet from the sales team (no interview scheduled), so I hold out hope there. And I applied for another position with my old company last night. I ran into one of my former colleagues at the store the other day (so good to see a familiar face!), and since she's now working in the department I applied to she's going to put in a good word for me. Fingers crossed!

So there's good news and less good news. I have a three-day weekend coming up, and only one more day of getting up at 4 AM. My new team looks to be significantly better than my old team. I keep looking forward.

Vanity, Thy Name is Whitman

I'm not getting any younger. None of us are, obviously. But occasionally I am a little more forcefully reminded of this.

My father has been bald for as long as I can remember. He has a thin strip around the sides and back, a bit like a tonsure. He lost the rest when he was eighteen. Even Mom has never seen him with hair. Unless you count those three strands of hair he used to comb all the way across the top. I don't know who he thought he was fooling. And if I didn't know exactly how stubborn he is, I'd have no idea how it took Mom so long to persuade him to stop doing that.

Since I inherited his hair - color, curl, widow's peak, cowlick, and all - I grew up worrying that I was going to go bald before I got old enough to drink. I know the gene's inherited from your mother's side. But Mom has no brothers, Grandma was adopted, and I'm the oldest grandson. So I didn't have any comfort from that.

But my nineteenth birthday came and wet with no significant hair loss. My temples started getting more salt than pepper, but I got used to that. (My first girlfriend didn't, but that's another story.) I counted myself lucky.

Then there was the day when I saw my scalp in the barber's handheld mirror. At first I thought, "Hmm, maybe I got it cut a little too short this time." And then I realized that was just crazy denial talk. I'm going to be forty this year. A little thinning is to be expected, alas.

Today I noticed that my widow's peak is a lot more pronounced. My hair is receding faster than I'd thought. It's starting to look like I'm going to wind up with a patch in front (that damn widow's peak and cowlick!) and a ring around the sides. Like Dad, but goofier.

I used to say I'd shave my head if I started going bald. Why do it halfway, right? But now that I'm faced with the actual possibility, I wonder how I'd look with a shaved head. Something tells me that's not a look I can pull off. I picture myself bald and goateed, and I think of Dr. Wolters. Dr. Wolters was my English teacher my freshman year in high school: a very good teacher, and one of the first people to really encourage my writing.

I liked him. He was nice to me and encouraged me. He was one of the best teachers in the state. He was a good critic who made you think your arguments through. And he ran marathons, which is pretty cool. But I don't want to look like him. He was a wiry, occasionally excitable little man with a big bald head. I wouldn't say he was unattractive, but I wouldn't say that I'd like to envision myself like him.

I suspect that most of us live in our own little Matrixes. In our minds, we're all black leather and cool shades and kung-fu badassery, but the reality is a little starker, a little dingier. We like to blot out the grey hair, the beer belly, the cellulite. And I don't think that's unhealthy, provided we don't swim too far out in those warm, welcoming waters. The undertow can be unbelievably strong when you get too far out from shore.

A Few Thoughts

Repeated exclamation points (!!!!) are not a sign of rational discussion. Neither is the desire to score debate points. If you want to play to the peanut gallery, go ahead and call yourself a comedian.

As delicious as it is, I guess salad isn't really enough for lunch, at least not while I'm working. Unless I can learn to enjoy headaches.

I wish I could speak French. In Russian.

I think Wolverine's hair looks dumb. There, I've said it.

I hope I'm making a good decision. The sales division of my current employer is moving in to our building, and they need a manager. I still want to leave, but at least this would "reset my annoyance clock" (as Mneme says) and getting a raise would help. I could save money to go back to school. Perhaps the third time will be the charm. Perhaps a different division with a different reporting structure will be a better place to work: more humane, more orderly. Perhaps. Only one way to find out, really.

I miss the ocean.