Quote of the Day: F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope."


In one of my the most stressful weeks of my professional career, I have learned how to make the day tolerable: getting in early enough to steal all the butterscotch discs and root beer barrels from the candy dish.

Quote of the Day: Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal."


This has got to be one of the ugliest summers in Seattle I have ever experienced. The weekend was just miserable. About the only interesting thing was when some guy mistook us for his drug dealers, or at least that was our suspicion anyway. Based in his behavior, he either thought we or the three-year-old with us was.

I was putting gas in my car Saturday afternoon on the squalid little avenue called Greenwood, when I noticed I was being watched by a thuggish looking guy with dreadlocks. He also looked like he smelled pretty bad. There were some kids running some kind of charity car wash next door so I at first I was worried about their safety but eventually I became more concerned for my own when he kept making motions like he was going to walk over to the car without actually picking his feet up off the asphalt. He kept his hand clenched around something in his pocket like it was the Holy Grail. Anyway, he kept looking at me with madness or longing in his eyes until we drove away.

And that's it. That's my story. I know it's pretty lame but such an anti-climatic story fits in quite nicely with my August so far. (Maybe I will blog about some of it later when the statute of limitations expires.)

Quote of the Day: Christopher Caldwell

"The Theodore Roosevelt Administration was a time of tumult that offers many parallels to our own. We'd do well to think more about those parallels. But such thinking needn't be accompanied by adulation for an egomaniacal weirdo who was as close to being a psycopath as anyone who ever occupied the Oval Office."


I rediscovered this quote that I've always liked a few days ago. Seriously, the guy was a lunatic.

Quote of the Day: Blaise Pascal

"A thinking reed - It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world."

A good thing to remember as one waits for his future to be decided by people who have no real stake in his existence, let alone his self-actualization.

Also, listening to Arcade Fire's new album helps.

Quote of the Day: J. Krishnamurti

“A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.”


Today, I have officially been employed at my job for two years. Boy, that seems like such a long time ago. A lot has changed. Back then, I was 190 pounds heavier, living with Mark, and as single as they come. About the only thing that hasn't changed is my generally high level of awesomeness.

Quote of the Day: William Gass

"Writing has almost always been difficult for me, something I had to do to remain sane, yet never satisfying in any ordinary sense, certainly never exhilarating, and never an activity that might satisfy Socrates’ admonition to find a logos for my life, as I felt it surely had for the authors I admired: even Malcolm Lowry’s dissolutely drunken sprees, even Hart Crane’s beatings at the hands of sailors, beatings he sought out as he ultimately sought the sea; even Céline’s meanness, a bitterness that ate through his heart before it got to his shoes and ate them, too; even these malcontents, though nothing justified their wasted ways, their anger, their multiplication of pain, might be, by their works, somewhat saved, their sins hidden under sublime blots of printer’s ink."


I just about lost a hand today. The receptionist sent out a company wide e-mail telling everyone that a cubicle had been filled up with old swag and chotskies nobody wanted since the re-branding three years ago had made them worthless.

I made the mistake of seeing what they had; and let me just say, I haven't experienced a feeding frenzy quite like that since my last trip to Ross and this almost made the constant state of anarchy reigning there look civilized. I guess bargains on ugly shirts have a special way of bringing out the savage man regardless of income level, and all the more if they're free.

Quote of the Day: Evelyn Waugh

"Humility is not a virtue propitious to the artist. It is often pride, emulation, avarice, malice--all the odious qualities--which drive a man to complete, elaborate, refine, destroy, renew, his work until he has made something that gratifies his pride and envy and greed. And in doing so he enriches the world more than the generous and good, though he may lose his own soul in the process. That is the paradox of artistic achievement."


I swear I have a real job, even a job I am a little proud of at times, but no one seems to believe me and it is kind of starting to bother me. I work in Enterprise Software Sales which is an actual career. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_software)

I spend my day talking to or trying to talk to Senior Vice Presidents, CFO's and CEO's of Fortune 1000 companies. My job is to explain very complex solutions in simple yet compelling enough terms to get them to start talking about the possibility of giving my company millions of dollars. And I am quite good at it. I mean really good. (I hate to brag but I must.)

I swear it is a real career with a real career path just as much as an accountant or lawyer is; but for some reason, as soon as people hear software sales they either assume that I wear a blue polo shirt and hassle people with my incompetence as they shop for small electronics or that I am a telemarketer who spends his day begging for the Glengarry Leads. None of these scenarios are true but I don't really blame people for thinking I have forfeited the corporate rat race because I was only a creative writing major after all.

I just need to figure out how to convince people I have a real job without being so low-class as to whip out my pay-stub. I don't want people to know how much I make because my identity is not completely tied up in my job (in my heart I am still the greatest unpublished novelist who ever lived). I would just like a little respect especially now that I am in a new ward/congregation thanks to our new house.

Any thoughts or advice out there beyond prettying it up a bit and saying "Business Development" instead of sales?