Next week I take a Windows 2000 class in San Francisco. We will be responsible for testing all of the various crap we run on our desktops throughout the company to see that it works with Windows 2000 Professional, Microsoft's baby elephant of an operating system designed for the "corporation". Part of me wants to do this and part of me wants to do something else, anything other than learning another operating system, which version number of this, which version number of that. I'm not good at remembering numbers anymore and although some of this is due to age, some of this is due to who in their right mind wants to deal with this shit? I think people are meant to do things for a while, a few years, a decade, and then move on to something else. Sloth would be my choice if I wasn't sure it wouldn't kill me dead in twelve months. I need some stimulation. I just may not need Windows 2000, amateur, professional or vegetable.

My landlord called today. He asked, since this was (it turned out) the last month of my one year lease, what my plans were, would I be staying on a month by month basis? My question for him, the thought of moving pushing me flat back into my chair, deep seated fears and urges shifting inside for the first time in months, flicking my eyes over the yet unpacked boxes from the last move still sitting in the living room corner, calculating what money I had in savings, asking, finally, what were his plans? For the apartment? He said he'd know in two or three months, that he didn't think he was coming back to Oakland, but he might and he'd do his best if he did to give me 60 days notice. Sixty days notice. Three or four months. Reality over the phone. I remember reality, but I don't keep a regular correspondence. I don't have it for breakfast. I don't pay it attention unless I absolutely must and now absolutely must appears to be looking at me two or three months distant, sixty days prior notice. This is coming, this year, next year, so maybe I'd better think about it.

The problem isn't that I've moved myself into a corner. I do that all the time. You can move yourself out of a corner. Might take time, might take effort, but you can do it. The problem is finding some place you want to go. I look back over my life and realize that I really haven't connected much with anything. I've had some good friends, but no place I've ever called home. Home disappeared somewhere in my teens, maybe earlier. I don't know when, I don't know why. I can't think of any place to which I would like to return. I can think of people I'd like to see again, but none with whom I'd like to take up where things left off. Maybe that's the human condition. Maybe I always thought I'd be dead by now, follow in the tradition of the male line of the family, and there was therefor no reason to worry about it. Sounds like a rationalization. Maybe I didn't think at all. Maybe I'm not thinking now. "Male line of the family". Grow up. What a wuss.

So it's Saturday night (if you haven't already guessed) and I'm having trouble getting to sleep. It happens, always on a weekend, but not often. I had a good day. Not much in the way of photographs, but a good day. I suspect tomorrow will be the same, except I now have to think about the possibility of moving. Yesterday I was finally vested at the company, the last 20% hold back of their matching funds in my 401k and retirement accounts now mine and, if I leave, they leave with me. Do I want to leave? Do I want to find something else in perhaps another city where the rents and commutes are not ridiculous? Start over? Again? What is there about starting over that won't put me exactly where I am now? Nothing. That I know of.