White Collar Drudgery

I don't think that I ask for too much from life. All that I want is a job that makes me happy. The rest of my life is coming along just fine. I have a woman who loves me and cares about me and I feel the same about her. Now I want to do something more meaningful with my life and that means finding a job that I can believe in and contribute to with sincerity. Maybe I am asking too much. My set of values or beliefs are not what I see around me. Does this make me an ultra conservative? I am not sure anymore. My moral compass is not always true either.

I really don't want to complain anymore about my job today. I doubt that I was like this when I started the journal. Back then the position was new and had promise. Now there is nothing but boredom.

To combat the boredom I work on the journal entries and do some reading. When I worked the three day shift hours, I read even more and it didn't bother me. I did my job and knew what was required of me. Now that I work five days a week I used to read only during lunch. Since things have been slowing down the reading has expanded beyond the lunch hour and I donít let it bother me anymore. Reading is far more productive to me. Iíll probably continue to do whatever I want to do until someone comments about it.

I think that I struggle more with myself than the company when it comes to keeping busy. If I could just kick back and relax without feeling guilty everything would be just fine. Its just that I feel like I am wasting time being here. At least I get some reading and writing done while I am here, so it isn't a complete loss. Yes, here is an example of the great American work ethic at its best.

The amount of frustration from my job that I have been feeling lately has had an enormous impact of the tone of this journal. Most of the time I can be a very easy going person. True, I also have my artistic temperament trying to offset the easy going portion, but most of the time I keep to myself. So what this means is that very few people can truly judge how I am feeling unless I tell them. Telling someone how I feel is something that I normally do not do. I like to work through my little personal traumas by myself. Some of them are blown out of proportion by my leaning toward the melodramatic, but I need something to keep my going. I am starting to sound very much like Morrissey here. He talks about the world lacking style in one his songs and I tend to agree. The world is not an ordered as a play or work of art. All of the flaws are there and people donít follow the script all of the time.

I guess that I like to think that I have my own individual style. I am not talking about fashion. I am talking about how I see the world around me. Sometimes things just seem to happen and I am merely watching.

As simple as it may sound, my mood generally improves when I start to write an entry. There are moments when the words work for me and I have a record of what was and wasnít important to me to look back on in a few years. I know that I am young and that some of opinions will change as I grow older.

I finished the Orson Welles book today. I'm not sure what I want to say about the book. It was informative to be sure and there were a few photos, but I'm not sure if it really altered my opinion of the man or not. The only real conception of him that I had was what I saw from his films and the wine commercials that he did later in life. I really donít remember any of his appearances on the various talk shows that the book mentions.

Of course its the films that Welles made that prompted me to read the book. I have seen Citizen Kane and I even own a copy of it. I even have some of the dialogue committed to memory. Another Welles film that I own and love is his version of Macbeth. At one time I had a taped copy of the Magnificent Ambersons which is considered to be almost as good as Kane, but I seem to have lost it somewhere. Since it was years when I last saw it, I only remember parts of the film. Other Welles films that I remember seeing include Touch of Evil and The Stranger.

This is the first biography that I have read in a long time. The last one that I read was about Jack Kerouac. The biography before that one was Harry Truman. Yes, my taste in biography covers a wide variety of people.

After reading the Orson Welles book, I think I know why I am not in film making. Very seldom do I notice the technical aspects of a film or at least as much as I should if I was going to be a director. The one thing that I do notice is the black circle that appears in the upper right hand corner of the screen when a cut is coming. This was pointed out to me by someone else though

California Dan should make a film. He already made a small one in college with his roommate. As part of their thirty minute short called Vignettes, they did a parody of the Mercury Theater sequence at the end of Citizen Kane. It was just the two of them in glorious black and white doing Joseph Cotton, Everett Sloane and the rest of the Mercury Theater players. I thought that the parody was great, but then what do I know.

Last night I watched part of the film From Here to Eternity. Its one of those films that most people have heard of from someone but might not have seen. The most famous scene is the one on the beach with Burt Lancaster and now I canít remember the name of the woman. I guess that I have something to research on the web tonight.

Besides Burt Lancaster in the film there was Montgomery Clift, Ernest Borgnine, and my personal pal Frank Sinatra. For me the most compelling actor of the group would have to be Montgomery with Burt coming in second. I canít stand the other two and the mystique of Frank Sinatra has always escaped me.

The other viewing choice last night was a Cary Grant and Doris Day film. I like Cary, but Doris Day does very little for me. It still amazes me that Doris Day was a famous pin up for American soldiers during World War Two. I know that the perception of what constitutes the ideal figure for a woman has changed since the 1940's, but in my opinion Rita Hayworth was far more attractive than Doris Day.

Brenda comes home tomorrow afternoon. The plan is for me to leave work early so that I can pick her up and take her home. I think that sounds like a good way to end a work week.

She said that she was going to buy me something, but I really couldn't think of anything. Books and compact discs are usually a safe bet with me. All that I really want is her. It will feel so good just to see her and hold her again.

Since I finished the Welles biography, I started back in on the Virginia Woolf novel, Jacob's Room, that I had started months ago.

The next book that I have in mind is one written by Isak Dinesen, who was really Karen Blixen, called The Dreamers. Karen was the character played by Meryl Streep in the film Out of Africa. The Welles biography mentions that Orson wanted to make a film of her book. Its hard to imagine a Welles version of Out of Africa. He did not have that particular book of hers in mind though so the point is moot.

I did next to nothing constructive for work today. Part of the morning was spent moving one database into a more complex database. Then the rest of the afternoon was spent reading and writing.

I am sure that Nick would say that there is plenty to do in the area of testing, but I have no interest in pursuing that career path. From my point of view it seems to be eighty percent procedural and about twenty percent technical. Most of his time is spent on the telephone trying to arrange times and waiting for a response from the networks. It all looks very slow and tedious to me. Why would I want to do something that would put me to sleep?

I can't really fault Nick and Tony about why they seem so loyal to the company. Both of them have families to support.

If I keep having this amount of free time in the coming weeks, a book might not be that far off for me. I can see it now. It'll be a book without a plot where characters babble on in declarative sentences.

This return of cold weather took my lips by surprise. I think that they are the most chapped they have been all winter.

California Dan called from Hollywood and gave me his new telephone number.