PLAN

One of the hardest things about my job is: the plan. not coming up with the plan or executing the plan, but getting the plan approved. I'm not quite sure why it has to be the hardest part of my job, but I guess it could be worse. It could be worse if I couldn't make the approved plan work. Or even worse if I didn't know what to do in the first place. But still... pretty frustrating when there's a plan that can't move forward for days or weeks. Draining emotionally. In an emotional time. In a time when I really want things to be a little easier.

SCURVE AWAY

"People moving all the time

Inside a perfectly straight line

Don't you wanna

Scurve away

Cause it's such

It's such a perfect day."

-Strawberry Swing, by Coldplay

THE SCRABBLE TEST

The subway ride into work takes about 35 minutes and in that time, I can usually play 2 or three games of Scrabble on my iPhone. A quick sidebar here, I would like to praise Hasbro for creating such a fine game and then adapting for the iPhone's touch screen, which I believe is it's ideal form. Really the only bad thing about it is that when it starts up, it plays an unavoidable intro song that cannot be muted or adjusted - making it very hard to discreetly start playing in quiet situations.

Anyway, I bring all of this up to say that on the subway ride in, I can usually tell how productive the day is going to be based on how I perform during the game. Frequently I win by over 50 points. Today, I won 2 games by 150 points. And it was a very productive day.

But I'm not superstitious.

FORWARD

I think self destructive behavior is so interesting. Sometimes you just want to punish yourself. Push yourself to a limit. It doesn't really seem like the healthiest thing to do, but when you do have one of those nights where you have one too many shots or stay up a little too late to "just get it right," sometimes you wake up the next morning with a new perspective that gives you what you need to make your situation better. So the thing that pushed you to be self destructive ends up making you whole again. It's like shedding a skin. Like a snake. Something that every now and then is exactly what we need to move forward.