Did you notice I was gone?
A week ago yesterday, I flew to Phoenix for a Show. (as we call it in the ‘industry’) Starting Thursday morning until Tuesday night, I spent just about 100 hours sitting at a computer in a cold, dark ballroom, cleaning up PowerPoint slides, making what we call ‘Happy Face’ picture loops for the conference attendees to stare at while they are eating and creating custom animated content in After Effects for lighting and video projection. I flew home yesterday, went directly to bed and stayed there for 14 hours.
They tell me that it was unseasonably cold in Phoenix this past weekend. I wouldn’t know. I never went outside. And that is totally normal for my job. I’ve been all over the US and a few cities around the globe and all of it looks like the inside of a hotel ballroom to me. How was the weather? 68 degrees and fluorescent.
But I shouldn’t complain, it’s better than a cubicle! And I did get to see an onion-domed church in St. Petersburg, Russia once, and I’d never have done so without this job. I saw the canals in Venice – even if it was only for a few moments as I walked from my hotel to the off-site awards dinner location. I rode a horse on a beach in Aruba on one of the rare trips when I had an extra day to myself.
There are times when I love my job, and I feel like the luckiest person in the world. And then there are times like now, when I am just exhausted and nothing that I did over the past week seems to have any significance despite the amount of time I spent working on it. I’m just so glad to be back home. Back to my boyfriend, and my books, and my games, and of course, WordPress! 🙂 This little slice of the internet where strangers read and respond to my comments and stories is so much more significant than even the most amazing animated effect I’ve done for a corporate convention audience.
Speaking of which, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of WordPress reading to catch up on, but perhaps I’ll be a post-everyday’er this week to make up for my absence.
Is it just me, or is WordPress such a significant part of your life that you actually miss it when ‘real life’ takes up too much your time?
Mind of a Mouse 
I’ve caught myself quite a few times, saying something to my family along the lines of “… and then X commented on that and Y said that she’d just written a post about that and I went to check it out and ….” and only when I see their blank faces do I realize they have no idea who all these people are or what the heck I’m talking about anyway.
It’s kinda sad, but also really, really cool at the same time.
LikeLike
I do the same thing! Isn’t it odd how you can feel like you know someone well, even though you’ve only ever read their writing? Definitely, ‘really, really cool.’
LikeLike
Frankly – a lot of the time I feel like if I could be a brain in a jar, linked to a keyboard and telekinetic mouse…
LikeLike
actually – that doesn’t sound so bad. Think of all the money you’d save on clothing. And for me, I’d never have to stress about what to wear and if fifteen more minutes of sleep is more important than putting make-up on. =)
LikeLike