BurningbirdIf you’ve read this weblog for any length of time than you know I’m rather partial to San Francisco.
Unfortunately, it looks like I’ll be having to move. San Francisco is now known as the most expensive city in the US. It’s also a place where every technical contracting position has 200+ applicants. These two facts aren’t necessarily mutually compatible.
What a bitch.
I could be more eloquent, but “what a bitch” sums up the situation quite nicely.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
There is nothing more implacable than a decision waiting to be made.
It can shake you out of sleep, pulling the covers off, forcing you out of bed and to your feet. It can hover around you during your waking hours, beating at you with tiny, subliminal fists of frustration.
As time passes the decision grows and swells and bulges and puffs out and enlarges and stretches and expands. Your attempts to fend it off become weaker as it smothers you in it’s soft folds, pushes you against the wall, rolls over you as you try to run.
Poets write of Decision. In The Road Not Taken Frost wrote:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler
The poem ends with “…and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
In this poem Frost sees Decision as noble — Man choosing to follow his own path rather than following the crowd. Compare this to Dorothy Parker’s caustic and brutally direct ‘Resumé:
Razors pain you; Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give;
Gas smells awful; You might as well live.
No nobility here — life as a lesser of evils.
Not all decisions are the same. Whether to choose strawberry ice cream or chocolate is but a moment’s thought; after all, one can choose chocolate tomorrow when choosing strawberry today. There are an infinite number of these decisions made in a life; exercise to keep your decision making capabilities from getting flabby from disuse.
Some decisions can only be made after sleepless nights and days spent in thought, little scales in your mind working overtime. To have a child or not. To marry or not. To make this move, buy this house, take this job, follow this path. Or not.
Regardless of the magnitude or its impact, once the the decision is made, you’re free of the weight, the monster has rolled on. This leaves plenty of room for Decision’s younger brother, Regret.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
As if you don’t know from previous entries, I am a huge SF Gate fan, reading it every day as well as subscribing to several email newletters. One of the main reasons why I like the publication so much is writers such as Mark Morford. If there is anyone in mainstream journalism who should have his own weblog, it’s Mark.
In today’s SF Gate Morning Fix Mark expresses his opinion about a new hair storage company, that will store hair samples until science invents a method of hair cloning and a cure for baldness. He writes:
In related news, another startup, Getoverit, Inc., will begin storing samples of semen, blood, lace lingerie, the menu from that cool little Thai place, and old photographs of slightly drunk couples smiling at that guy’s birthday party that one time, all stored in old loosely sealed yellow Tupperware containers and stacked in the back of founder Susan Barricelli’s garage under some old paint cans and her ex-boyfriend’s golf ball collection until modern technology finds a way to uselessly revive old relationships so you can have your heart wrecked all over again. “It’s only a matter of time before someone finds a way to efficiently re-drag your heart through the emotional mud and make you feel like a leftovor corn dog and leave you crying in your Raspberry Ginger Detox Yoga Tea,” Barricelli sighed, sipping her tea.
In his regular column last week Mark wrote about the current situation in the Middle East, the War on Terror and the general level of warmongering that seems to exist:
No one is preaching peace. No one striving for genuine camaraderie or balance or compromise. And too few of us seem willing to believe that 9/11 has mutated into a brutish hollow excuse for the Bush administration to perpetuate a war for oil and to proclaim new enemies and to chip away at the Constitution and your civil liberties in the name of increased federal control and fewer dissenting voices.
Warmongering — discussions occurring with an almost obscene glee every time another atrocity in the name of “peace” is committed. Compromise is for the weak, the evil, the lost. A quick look at all the new “warblogs” in weblogs.com should refresh your memory if you don’t know wherefore I speak.
But I digress. Speaking of little green worms in sour black apples, as Mark would say if he were me but he isn’t me so he hasn’t said it, read his columns and subscribe to his newsletter — it’s worth the inevitable but barely noticeable increase in spam.
(Thanks to Stavros for reminding me to share Mark with others.)
P.S. Check out another person’s view of Mark — from the Christian Resource Net.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
As if you don’t know from previous entries, I am a huge SF Gate fan, reading it every day as well as subscribing to several email newletters. One of the main reasons why I like the publication so much is writers such as Mark Morford. If there is anyone in mainstream journalism who should have his own weblog, it’s Mark.
In today’s SF Gate Morning Fix Mark expresses his opinion about a new hair storage company, that will store hair samples until science invents a method of hair cloning and a cure for baldness. He writes:
In related news, another startup, Getoverit, Inc., will begin storing samples of semen, blood, lace lingerie, the menu from that cool little Thai place, and old photographs of slightly drunk couples smiling at that guy’s birthday party that one time, all stored in old loosely sealed yellow Tupperware containers and stacked in the back of founder Susan Barricelli’s garage under some old paint cans and her ex-boyfriend’s golf ball collection until modern technology finds a way to uselessly revive old relationships so you can have your heart wrecked all over again. “It’s only a matter of time before someone finds a way to efficiently re-drag your heart through the emotional mud and make you feel like a leftovor corn dog and leave you crying in your Raspberry Ginger Detox Yoga Tea,” Barricelli sighed, sipping her tea.
In his regular column last week Mark wrote about the current situation in the Middle East, the War on Terror and the general level of warmongering that seems to exist:
No one is preaching peace. No one striving for genuine camaraderie or balance or compromise. And too few of us seem willing to believe that 9/11 has mutated into a brutish hollow excuse for the Bush administration to perpetuate a war for oil and to proclaim new enemies and to chip away at the Constitution and your civil liberties in the name of increased federal control and fewer dissenting voices.
Warmongering — discussions occurring with an almost obscene glee every time another atrocity in the name of “peace” is committed. Compromise is for the weak, the evil, the lost. A quick look at all the new “warblogs” in weblogs.com should refresh your memory if you don’t know wherefore I speak.
But I digress. Speaking of little green worms in sour black apples, as Mark would say if he were me but he isn’t me so he hasn’t said it, read his columns and subscribe to his newsletter — it’s worth the inevitable but barely noticeable increase in spam.
(Thanks to Stavros for reminding me to share Mark with others.)
P.S. Check out another person’s view of Mark — from the Christian Resource Net.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I’ve been in San Francisco one year this month.
One year ago I stopped living with my ex-husband, drove 3000+ miles across country, and established a new life in California.
One year ago I closed down my successful Massachusetts business and bid my friends and Boston good-bye.
One year ago I sat in my new apartment, unsure if I had just made the biggest mistake of my life. I sat, quietly in a darkening room and listened to the strange sounds of a new home.
Gradually, I became aware of a soft light coming in through the window. Looking up, I saw the Silver Moon framed in the window. Outside, the Bay was lit up so brightly I could see the ripples of the individual waves.
Well, I wasn’t looking for a sign, but this will do. Yes, this will do.