The Tail of the Tech-Monkey and the Existential Conundrum

Or
To Flee or not to Flee…

This may or may not be the most opportune time to post something like this, but the last few days have really got me pondering. And to Ponder is to Mull, and to Mull is to ruin a perfectly good dose of Joyful-Expectation that’s been a long time comin’.

How much can one thing own another?

I’m not talking about relationships based on esoteric stuff like warm and fuzzy feelings or various planes of disdain. In a professional capacity that does not involve the selling of one’s immediate future to a governing entity, how much of one’s existence can be detained by another? And how can wanting to better oneself be such a taboo?

I have an opportunity to not only move slightly up and over from the position I tentatively hold now, but to do something that the possibility of accomplishing on this current path has a measly shelf life of 2 or 3 years tops – return to school to get a real degree in something I actually love doing. I know myself and my life well enough to be realistic; if I wait much longer, I won’t.

My new job is going to be beyond this everyday tech-biscuit business, but I’m looking forward to it; and the ability to expect the best used to be something that this life had all but broken in me. If I don’t keep learning and growing, I get Bored and when I get bored I get Complacent and Complacency leads to Swelled Head which causes me to tilt off center which makes children stare and point and… It just leads to no good, I tell you, no good a’tall.

So I opted for the one that will give me the things I require more than money. Don’t get me wrong, money is right there on the list beneath “Happiness” and “Cranial Stimulation,” but it’s not the end-all-be-all of my contentment. It’s a nice perk that I hope gets even perkier as time goes on.

Back to the original question –

I can understand the other side’s point of view; it makes sense to think that effort and privilege bestowed on another should be rewarded with respect and loyalty. But at what point does Loyalty become Obligation? And when Opportunity to excel is denied, doesn’t Obligation bleed out into Resentment? I would like to think I’m bigger than that, better than the baser human state of selfish resentment and mounting odium, but I can’t say for sure that if I’d stayed, if I’d turned down an opportunity the likes of which would either never be offered again or I would be too smug/afraid/bitter to consider accepting in the future, that self-destructive little germ would not have started burrowing its way into the darkest parts of me, festering and scheming.

So, how much of me is beholden and for how bloody long?

A Surgeon Unsexed my Kitty!

And they hate me. Well, Pi does anyway. Phi has no idea that there's anything missing and is bouncing off the furniture. Pi on the other hand is a tiny mass of hate at times and a bundle of pain at others. Why does it work like this? Even in humans it's "Snip Snip Buh-Bye" for men and "I'll trade you a uterus for a wollop of pain" for women.

Fuzziness Incarnate has some new additions, and before anyone asks how come it’s 99% pics of them sleeping, you try keeping 5 month old kittens still long enough to take a portrait with a camera-phone.

Reality-Slapped, Crisis Averted

It seems that, according to some reasonable-mined individuals (ha!) who believe that there is always a perfectly logical reason for everything (doubly ha!), my ears are in fact not shifting/ roaming/ planning a sight-seeing tour of my nether regions after all. Because in the black and white, rather plain world that is the sensible land of the upright/ uptight/ no-funsees, ears and other external humanly parts do not ramble away in fits of ennui. It seems in this sane, sensible plane of the clear-cut and the wary, glasses, however, do require adjusting. Despite their best efforts to make me see (through lenses requiring tweaking, no less) existence in a straightforward, tidy manner that revels in the idea of a world that twirls off-kilter in an exceptionally boring way, and after reflecting short and squishy on the realism of one versus the mirthful morbidity of the other, I’ll take my twisted noggin’s notion any day of the week. Except for every other Tuesday after a Monday that does not end in suck, at least, as those are my “Make like the World is Shiny” day.

They Call Me...Shifty Ears

Yep, that's right. Me ears be shifty. Okay, shifting. It seems they've tired of their usual placement on the sides of my head and have decided to take a tour of my scalp. So far they've only ventured a bit left, but what if they get more adventurous, if the urge to see the sights that is my cranial region grows to a fever pitch and I awake to find I can hear myself blinking? What if a jaunt around the block no longer thrills and they opt to winter down south?!? The vision of my future freakish self kindly asking a cold-handed specialist not to shout is almost enough to make me run off and fashion some duct-tape earmuffs. I wonder what other parts and appendages are planning off-season vacays in the wonderful on-me-doors. Shall I awake to find ankle-biter has taken on a whole other, much more fun-at-parties meaning?