"Children"

This was my first printed full-color project long, long ago.  I labored over it.  I ran out of time before it felt finished.  What a waste of time.  I could do it better and faster now, but I remember my earnest effort back then and feel some compassion for my younger self.

I grouse about how kids today are too lazy to waste earnest time on completely pointless things like this, and I think about my current job and think about how I’m still wasting perfectly good time doing things that won’t matter in pursuit of a perfection that doesn’t exist.

Proof we did actual work in NH

I wrote a long blog yesterday that I didn’t post about my trip to New Hampshire this week, and it struck me boring – my recital of the trip anyway.  The trip was great.  My coworker Diane and I visited our software company, and we spent a lot of time pulling weeds in our database.  I wonder if I’m wasting the same kind of time as I did on this Prisma color black hole – yet at the same time the things I learned will be part of the tools I can use on the job later.  Sometimes we don’t see the fruits of our labor for, em, 30 years or so.

Diane next to the car we wished was our rental car

As for the trip, Diane is a pleasant travel partner, the software people are great, NH is a pretty state, and we even got enough free time to see the ocean in The Hamptons and visit Boston.  We even drove through Salem, but as far as I know we didn’t see any witches.  We didn’t see any famous people either, but we did get our fill on scenery.

We weren’t supposed to get this much free time, but the software company had an emergency and gave us an unexpected day off.  Woohoo!!  We walked all over historical Boston and saw all the main historical sites.  The weather was perfect and we felt like we were playing hooky.  It was the best work trip ever!

Boston -- the steeple is the Old North Church

I have an almost formed thought that there’s a lesson somewhere in this trip.  Like all that time I spent with Prisma colors, the free time Diane and I spent roaming around may turn out to be important.  When I was in college, I was killing myself on my homework every night while my teachers complained that I needed to loosen up.  One of my exbosses told me that if he wanted perfect, he would’ve hired a photographer.  It took years for me to see that a spontaneous blob of watercolor might be the thing that made a piece of art sing.  That my “style” came out in my unguarded moments, and that’s the stuff people actually like best.



USS Constitution, which is still an active Navy ship

I’ve often felt that if something comes too easily, it doesn’t count.  I’ve also seen that my laborious learning process pays off later, even if it isn’t obvious during my moments of self-flagellation.  Anyway, thoughts to ponder while I reminisce my way through New England’s major food groups, sun, sand, mountains in the distance, laughing kids at Paul Revere’s house, the cute boy with cupcake frosting smeared all over his face, and juggler Bob (as seen on TV!) making the kids laugh…

The Holocaust memorial is squished in a narrow median strip.  It seems simple, but facts and quotes are etched on towering glass squares, numbers Nazis tattooed on victims etched on glass reaching up to the sky.  Looking up the towers, it hit me how many it means when they say 6 million people died.  This simple-seeming monument struck me deeply.

  

Hi from Hampton Beach



Relaxed and happy - and thankful I packed a hat!