Oh honeys. What can I say, the past few to several weeks have been a perfect storm of long-holiday-weekend ennui, the beginning of for-real spring (this is Seattle, remember), the good old cycle of frenzy and malaise, senioritis and final projects and the ever-fresh unexpected sadness that�s a result of no longer having even the awfullest classes, social obligations, mild illness, and the long chug at work towards something like a finish line. Also I�m in a notably weird state, if I were a hippie I�d say "place" instead, with respect to what I�m going to do next when my keepers here shake my hand and give me the immemorial contractor�s thankyouseeyougoodbye. Whether or not this is actually the case, I feel like my whole self is in operational limbo until I am officially set free and I can then start hitting my own bricks, my own pavement. I don�t want to say things until I can make proclamations, I don�t want to write until I have a different story to begin; my sense now is one of ending, dissolving. Which of course is a trap because if things don�t turn out to be the scenario I�m currently mooning over � which not-turning-out, how the hell is this for irony, would include getting offered one of those dope long-term contracts with benefits here, which my HR source on the inside maintains is still a possibility � then I will not have written in ages and I will feel not only foolish about but disconnected from the ongoing narrative-cum-wankfest of my immemorial diary and I may never wank again. And I think we all know what a loss to humanity that would be.

I handed in something called the Production Draft around 12:30 today. 70-some pages of pure uncompromising strategic power, and let�s not fail to mention all the pretty pictures. My manager is, as I type, in a meeting with the supercheese at the 4pm end of which he will hand her said draft � oh, crap, I just remembered I�m supposed to be putting together a .zip version of the package that he can e-mail around to the mezzocheeses tonight � and, as I said to Steve earlier, from here on out it�s all editing and formatting. This morning the guy in the next cube, while we were small-talking, asked me, "Well, have you liked working here?" and my paranoid grammarian�s mind caught on the perfect tense like it was one of those do-not-back-up spikes that come out of the pavement in parking lots and I thought Wait wait, does he know something I don�t? and there was a tense little sad little moment where I felt very sorry for myself, I was doing the opposite of decathecting and projecting myself fully emotionally forward into the embarrassing moments of getting told with two days� notice that my contract is up, for instance, and of having to say goodbye to the inquisitive cube neighbor and let him watch me walk out the lobby door. Then I remembered that I � officially � don�t really care, and that I�m getting excited about the opportunities I may have to do completely different things for a while that involve neither lobbies nor cubes. But still, the moments. If you�ve ever been a contractor, you know what I�m talking about. There�s a loss of dignity in having to leave even the most undignified of jobs. (Except for maybe that St*rb*cks one.) And I feel like I�m talking around it, not that I�m confident there�s an It but I�m talking around something, and ooh I hate when other people do that especially in their diaries, it makes me feel like the class tard all over again and it also seems to me like they are doing it for attention. Note: I�m not talking about you, Dear Reader, I am talking about people you don�t know. I am stubborn and a little bit mean: I may have written here before about how whenever I see some midlife-crisis case or software gob driving around in an expensive car watching people watch him and looking terribly self-satisfied, nodding like a liege while his car is stopped at a light, I like to focus my attention on, say, a grubby-looking dude in a rusted-out Toyota Corona who is directly behind him. I give Corona a flirtatious smile and the chin-down-eyes-up and maybe put my hair behind my ear while he�s looking back at me, and maybe the wind blows it free and I have to do it again. Sometimes Boxster gets visibly angry, which is marvelous fun, and sometimes he contrives by some movement, such as stretching his arms in a showy manner and putting one around the passenger seat, to catch my eye and draw it in his direction. But I pretend I don�t even see him, and maybe when the light turns green he will gun his pricey engine and floor it out of the intersection as a take that so I see � too late, bitch � what I am missing. Again, big fun. I try not to abuse the perks of my gender but man, some people are just asking for it.

And see, people who read my diary are in no way asking for it; in fact, I am rather gaga about the very concept of them to the extent that I must sometimes force myself not to smile flirtatiously and instead to put my head down and hew to the illusion that there is serious work going on here. Or at least seriousness. I�m not the guy in the sports car, but I can see where someone else would think that I was trying to act like I was.

("So," Steve might say as if in courtroom summation of an argument, "you�re so considerate of what total strangers might conceivably think of you that you�re going to tamp down your own preferences to meet what you assume their expectations are, even though by virtue of the shoot-first-ask-questions-later assumptions you ascribe to them it follows that they�re probably not worthy of your consideration?" Yeah yeah yeah, I know I know I know.)

Argh.

The next few months are going to be so cool! If only they can really be that cool.

That�s it in a nutshell. I am a spaz and a nutcase. Sorry. I am going to go zip up those files now.