January 21, 2008

Monday, January 21, 2008 2:29:45 AM

I read the clock backwards and thought it was 6:10 AM.  Oh well.   I am at the computer now so I’ll write a bit.

We had dinner at my mom’s house.  I was glad to visit with grandma.  I realized that the number of times I will be able to visit with grandma is limited.  I will need to remember the promise I made to myself to write to her.  It is odd to be seeing someone I know so well facing death.  She seems to have a very matter of fact attitude about it.  I am sure that after a while it sounds restful.  I know my years have brought enough that the thought has crossed my mind.

I think quite a bit about the idea of my death ending the labors of my life.  I suppose that is the great fear.  That after one dies “then cometh the day in which man can perform no labor”.  Terminating my job at AMIS is a far cry from death but I have experience some poignant emotions as I look at projects I was working on that will never come into existence at least at AMIS.  The mix of feelings about them is on the one hand I had a huge amount of time and effort into the ground work for the projects on the other hand the projects weren’t that meaningful to me in that even completed they would not fill anything I would have like about a life legacy.  There wasn’t really any of me in them.  Thinking back over the last five or six years I am amazed at how little I really did get done at AMIS in that way.  I am sure that is a big reason I am leaving.  I also know that the proprietary nature and lack of ownership of my work bothers me.  AMIS decides what to do with my work and who gets to see it.  I am very excited about the prospect of owning my own work.

As I think of it that way it clarifies things.  Thought and ideas are quite personal.  Having a company own your thoughts and ideas is similar to having the company own you.  I know I am overstating that a bit but not so much that it should be ignored.

A revelation I had in church was that the function of working for money is to cross the line I wrote about yesterday where there is enough money for food, shelter, safety and medical care.  I may be forgetting another basic necessity but the point stands that the first penny earned and spent after those items have been covered by cost becomes an expression of ones soul.  Much like the way a person breaths most of this expression happens unconsciously.  Unfortunately I also believe that much of this expression happens askew to the true inner soul of a person.   Lawn care does not produce a legacy.  Meals eating out do not provide an expression of soul.  A new car does not do much for a persons self actualization.  Those are not things that need to be entirely abstained from however I think it is healthy to realize that they are all activities which steal time and resource away from other activities we may find more meaningful and bring us more happiness.  All of the things we don’t have time for example like exercise and journal writing.

I am feeling like I might actually get back to sleep so I am going to give it a try.