Dear J-

Everything’s rolling pretty well at work — hours are being cut back to sane numbers, the documents we’re generating are getting some decent reviews (although sometimes we devolve into endlessly arguing intent and content) and the end’s in sight, with any help from the political side. Personally things are going well too — daughter’s doing well in school, son has stopped hitting people (as far as I can tell) and my Pocket Planes empire is up to Level 49 with thirty planes to throw into the skies at a moment’s notice.

So why the worst day? We’re completing a round of layoffs at the plant, and after this one all three of these people pictured here — coworkers in name, but friends really — are gone. Poof. Disappeared. Right-sized. Walked off. I grabbed a box and tried to help because it felt too soon, too sudden by far. One more chance?

We got it. Lunch afterwards. Closure, of a kind. Cool, raucous laughter after the tears of the morning, moving on and beyond. I would venture without too much risk that some job is better than no job, but this definitely opens up opportunities and possibilities beyond babysitting a roomful of engineers (who often, as I do, need reminders to eat. Or tie your shoe.). I will miss that. But it’s the selfish-me who will, not the one who knows this leads to better things.

Mike

Dear J-

It was a quiet day, more or less — at home, kids both sick-ish, and errands to be run (my car has passed smog again, although it may only do so for another few cycles if the current low-maintenance plan is being followed) and so we had a significant deviation in the routine, from going out and seeing the sun to staying home and watching the flickering images on the television keeping us occupied and stir-crazy, all cooped up together.

Mike

Dear J-

The slightly deranged look is one I’ve seen in the mirror before. We’ve noted — and as she’s grown, it becomes like prophecy — she’s just like me in many ways, from the unreasoning anger to the stubborn nature to sensitivity and good sense of direction. It’s funny seeing yourself in a little mirror like this; you know what lies ahead and yet there’s little that can be done to swerve from this foreordained path.

Mike

Dear J-

Shortly after pushing his trains along the bumpy track for fifteen minutes — quite happily, I might add — he pushes the whole track off the table. Now I understand why the train layout tables all have a raised lip.

Mike

Dear J-

Check it off the bucket list: close-up and personal with the Wienermobile. Yes, I know, my hot dog has a first name and all that; it’s crass commercialism, it’s a rolling billboard to bad habits. It’s also tremendous fun, and I’m glad I had the chance to participate.

Seeing as how these are becoming weekly updates (I’ll go back to daily and bore you before too long) this week was marked by plenty of hot dog-related themes, seeing as how we did make it out to Costco one night after having flaked out and not making it home in time on a day I’d promised to be back earlier. And, as was drilled into me, why is that acceptable to treat my family that way but not work? Priorities are all out of whack. Yet I feel like James Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life — if not for this job, then we’re going to toss a shedload of people out of work, and that’s important too, isn’t it?

I know the family life is suffering. I just don’t see a way around it, at least not yet.

Mike

Dear J-

It has been a long week (didn’t I start out last week this way too? clearly I need to rethink my strategies) and a long day to boot. To the library, to lunch, to the park, pushing a stroller full of kids uphill perhaps in atonement for ignoring them the rest of the week. They know who I am. They just don’t get to see me most of the time lately. By the time I get back they’ve eaten and gotten changed into pajamas, ready to head to bed just as I roll in.

Is it sustainable? Of course not. But it feels like the new normal; work has me so turned around that I feel guilty about not being the last one out the door, first one in, single-handedly trying to save what we can out of last year. I’ve said before that I consider 2012 a bit of a lost year, and that’s why: I started in high gear and eventually just lost it, at least in terms of the creative side: no sharing, whether oversharing or not, means no outlet but work.

How much is left for us to confront as we get along? There’s so much left to do, and time grows increasingly short.

Mike

Dear J-

I’m not convinced I’m completely up to hanging out with these kids lately; between the lack of sleep and lack of time I’ve had a marked lack of patience with them; what do I really expect at this age? Professionalism? Time to kick back and let the weekend take us where it may, not fretting so much about what I can’t control.

Mike

Dear J-

Since last we spoke the Boston Marathon was bombed, suspects were caught, additional gun control laws failed to clear filibuster in the Senate and I spent some sixty-plus hours at work. In other words it’s been a long week. Heck, it’s been a long day, period. Can’t be helped. You take all kinds of little shortcuts to save time and it ends up being that you assume you have more than enough time left over to handle the rest of what’s being thrown at you. Turns out the work expands to fill the time you have left over, or you figure you can go slow now that you’ve carved out enough time.

Twenty-four hours in a day. That’s a hard limit. Something’s gotta give if you keep robbing time away from family.

Mike

Dear J-

It was a little like driving to work today, heading in to see some friends and having the kids play together. I spent the afternoon watching them, exhaustedly, as they played and tried to make sense of what’s happening in the next week. Meetings. NRC. Presentations. Papers. Sometimes I want to go off by myself and put up a little screen and tell them keep out, out.

Mike

Dear J-

It has been a long week — a fruitful one at work, but I can’t say the same about writing for myself or even photography, even simpler right? It seems like every few months or so I feel like I have to get some bit of camera gear to spur on my creativity; just lately I’ve been picking up random Adaptall-2 SP lenses and having some mixed results, though some fun is to be had as well.

They say that 90% of your shots are taken between 28 and 90 mm (equivalent focal lengths for a 35mm camera), which translates from moderate wide angle to mild telephoto. We are used to seeing things in a certain way, the thought goes, and anything much beyond normal is distinctive and striking, although perhaps it is also gimmicky — I know I’ve been guilty of popping on a long lens just because I know it gives me a unique knife to cut out a small detail of the world to share.

Maybe it’s the same with writing this week; so many words have been sacrificed on paper in a highly technical context (Coulomb damping) that I wonder if I have a normal perspective any more. What else? Our weekend plans seem to contract in direct relation to how exhausted the week leaves us, and this has been a very long one — so dinner, here, is courtesy of McDonald’s, and entertainment comes from the long slide. Some days it’s enough.

Mike