2001-08-15 - 9:58 a.m.

What the hell is up with this growing up stuff? I don't get it.

My plans for when I "grew up" have always involved making my living by sitting in my den with a computer, surrounded by books, sunlight outside, writing, like Richard Dreyfuss at the end of "Stand By Me," or doing some job on the set of a movie somewhere, or working in a lab, getting up early to look at the computer models I'd been up until late in the night setting up or watching something I'd designed being tested in a wind tunnel or anything like that. Nowhere in my plans for the future did 8 AM stakeholder meetings come in. Nowhere in my plans for the future was there a job that would ever have regular stakeholder meetings.

I realized just how strange my life had become compared to what I was expecting this morning at 7:43 AM when I woke up by some very strange dream to find I had slept way too late because my alarm clock hadn't gone off. I had 17 minutes to get ready and bike to a meeting across town (It's a fairly small town) so I could sit in a big conference room in an uncomfortable chair writing "obstacles put up by co-workers, managers, customers, and yourself" on a large piece of paper with a green marker along with the rest of my department at my table, while other tables did the same. At 9 this morning, when I finally returned, having been to a meeting and back before I'd normally be awake on *any* day, I just wanted to crawl into bed, fall asleep, wake up, and be back in high school, able to try again. Not that my life is bad, it's just not what I was planning at all, and I want to get another stab at it. But I can't, so now I have to deal with all the Stupid while I try to get my life back in order.

Part of that trying to get my life in order is getting a copy of my birth certificate or Social Security card so I can prove that I'm actually legal to work in this place where I've been working for the past month and a half. I finally went back to the Rockport Municipal Offices today to see if I could do that there.

"Were you born at Pen Bay?" the woman at the front asked me.

"No," I said. "I was born in Millinocket."

"Oh," she responded. "You'll have to go back to the Millinocket town office, we don't have those here." *pause* *smile*

Okay. So right now this government and everyone else is making a big deal about overusing gas and all that, but I have to go 117 miles to get a little piece of paper to prove who I am. Because this town's town office can't get something that another town's town office has, and has had for almost 20 years. And of course, that's making the assumption that I can drive there, which I can't. And 234 miles round trip is quite the bike ride.

God, I'm tired.

*pause*

*smile*