pseudozen.com

2008 was a pretty stable year for me...by my standards, anyways. I didn't change jobs or houses, I had a steady girlfriend the whole year, etc. I didn't even change my hair style.

But the past few months have started to signal the return of the constant upheaval that I'm more accustomed to in my life.

The deal to buy a horse farm with Sheila last year fell through, and we both basically settled back into our previous plans, almost as if it never happened. All within the course of 3 months. Shortly after that, she lost her job very unexpectedly. My roommate and close friend seems to be reconsidering his entire life. My other close friend is going through the big D and don't mean Dallas. And I may be moving soon.

It's not a major move - I'm hoping to get an apartment 1 block from work, rather than an hour's drive away. I've officially given up too much of my life to Route 20. I love the idea of dropping the 1-hour commute, rarely getting home before dark, getting home tired even after a normal day, and always having to coordinate with someone else for transportation...all of that, I trade for one simple device: an umbrella.

Yesterday was my quarterly review at work. The strange thing about that is that my company doesn't do quarterly reviews. In fact, yesterday was the first quarterly review *ever* in the history of the company. And possibly the last.

You see, I brought this on myself. My boss and I are both bull-headed when it comes to our ideas about programming. He and I lock horns intellectually more than the whole rest of the team put together, and although he tells me that he respects the fact that I stand up for my ideas, I think at the end of the day he'd rather I just bow to his superior kung fu (he actually is a top-notch programmer) with unblinking deference.