In the air

Rob is in the air. Whee, whee, whee, I get my Rob back. He'll be home tonight, tra-la.

No, I cannot describe the tune those words are following as they run through my brain. Yes, I am way too cheerful.

Choices

I believe I have more choices than I see. Maybe a lot more.

When I say "I have to do my work", that's shorthand for "The consequences of not doing it (loss of face at work, possible eventual loss of job) are something I'd dislike more than I'd dislike doing the task(s) at hand." When writing out the long form I had to take a moment to think what the bad consequences would be. Oh yeah, no job. OK. Now that I've phrased it that way, I can equally well say "I choose to do my work." I know which one feels better to me.

I can also spend a few minutes imagining what else I could do: gee, if I lived in a box somewhere, and grew all my own food, then I wouldn't be burning up much cash, and thus I wouldn't be fixing this OS bug to finance my lifestyle. That'd be a choice too. Of course, I'd be colder at night. That's a disadvantage. Maybe a better box (something more houselike) and a less-stressful job... It's all tradeoffs.

I'm sure the alert reader can do this same exercise with the phrases "I need a massage" or "That's not safe". Both are short versions of a longer sentence often left unexamined. Both involve tradeoffs (risk/reward, expense/pleasure, what-have-you).

There are also choices hedged around by my own assumptions. I keep my techie career because it's rather expensive to live here. I'm not one of the lucky few who has enough money to pay this kind of mortgage and still ditch that career. But it's a stressful job with long hours. There's no way I can think of to make this income in any other career, not without loads of training. I'm stuck, right? Poor me, right? What if... I MOVED? Yes, away from the traffic and my friends and the political monoculture and the free Internet access and the insane real estate prices and the good Thai food. Oh, look at all the other assumptions unraveling when I pull that one thread!

My goal is to see more and more of these choices, and make them explicitly (even if quickly in some cases: no, I don't want to live in a box) instead of implicitly. I expect it will lead to a lot less "poor me" and maybe some really creative life choices.