Ah, writing a daylog again. How come I only write daylogs when I want to
whine? Oh, simple, either (1) there isn't a time when I don't want to whine, or (2) I write daylogs to channel my
perceived misery somewhere. Hmm, maybe I should try to write honest day
logs (what's wrong with "
diary", anyways? too
girly for menly
men of E2?) soon. Ah well.
I'm at work now. Not actually working, though, which should be evident since I'm writing this. This is my second-to-last day at work actually, and unsurprisingly, a relief. It's amazing how repulsive can work which you perceive as useless be. It got better now that my hours aren't strict, but still at mornings I feel sometimes this overwhelming need to just stay in bed. It's a tech support/errand boy sort of summer job as trainee at Sámi Oaphahusguovddas, or, Sami Educational Center.
Funny, though, you'd think I'd be delighted to get money from doing nothing. This week I haven't done a shit - some errands, but mostly hung out at reading room (computers for use by the public), which I'm supposed to be supervising in case of trouble. We have this World Reindeer Herders' Conference, WRHC, this week, you see, and that means lots of reindeer herders, some of which might be actually housebroken, literate and able to use a computer.
Did you think I started teeny-angst whining yet? No, but now I do; it feels as if I've wasted my youth. Really, I spent my underage free time almost completely tinkering with computers. What did I get? Expertise? That's what I thought, but lately I've realized I don't have even that. It's really quite depressing when, after all the praise from mathematics teachers and all that time spent in dark room alone, you realize you're no better than the guy next door who you tell about php one day and see him do it better than you the next (not that it happened to me, but you get the general idea).
Someone who used to be my friend and someone who might have been my girlfriend if things had worked out differently announced an engagement a couple of months ago. They were 17 and 18, respectively, I think. I'm older than either of them, and well, I don't think I need to say more. Oh. Hmm. Want more? Of course not, but do I look like I care? So here I sit, suddenly realizing that not only I wasted my teenages, but I'm going to waste the rest of my youth moaning about it. Then I realize I don't have much to show for it; I'm working for lower pay than my friends are. Another old childhood friend wrote an email a while ago. He asked if I was having any summer job, and suggested I rent a room for summer from HOAS (some kind of organization for arranging apartments for students) and get a job quick. I don't know why he told me that, but in the following short exchange of mails it turned out he had a rather well-paying job for his position and was planning on starting his own firm. He's 17 days younger than me, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, not as smart as me. I think I need to get a grip. Of course, I think that every day, only to assess my alternatives and end up in the same conclusion: wait.
Enough whine for now. I'm heading to confluence (see www.confluence.org) in two weeks or so; this particular confluence, located in northern Lapland, is in the Lake Inari, 10 kilometers from land and 40 kilometers from Inari, the village where I live. I'm planning to go there by rowing, from Inari, as crazy as it might sound. A friend is coming along as a rowing boat is surprisingly hard to keep in course without someone to steer it. Some might wonder why the heck I want to go that way with rowing boat when we could take instead a motor boat, or at least drive a road to somewhere on the shore closer to that confluence, but I wouldn't. Not only would using such mechanical aids feel like cheating (OK, so I use GPS to find the confluence; that doesn't count!), but this is a good opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for a while, a prolonged physical exercise combined with spending the night in wilderness with little or no supplies. I wonder if I should take a sleeping bag along. Well, I suppose the airborne blood consumers common to our climate make some sort of protection necessary.
Well, I'd like to complain more about my situation, especially with females whom I find highly pleasant to look at yet as impossible to initiate a social interaction with as with any human beings, but I intuit that I've already talked about this in daylogs more than my quota. But honestly, just recall what you thought about when this age and my behaviour should become understandable.
Hmh. Still over 2 hours left. I wonder if they would notice if I just went home. Thank god I won't have to take this much longer; if I'm like this after three weeks, I wonder what I'd be doing after a year of this. Writing bad poetry, maybe?