Two things have been frustrating the fuck out of me as of late: 1) this job, and 2) completing my music project. As for #1, it mostly comes down to the fact that I can't stand some of the people I work with. Kole is as technically-deficient as ever, and has been trying (with no success) to interrogate my progress. I just want to smack her. And she called a spontaneous meeting today with the group because her pet worker Molly found a bug. It wasn't even a show-stopper. If anybody else discovered it, believe me, there wouldn't have been anything beyond a CC:'d email.

I quit my last job because it took a corporate nosedive (to quote a co-worker who put it well) and became an extremely boring place to work. But damnit, at least my supervisors knew more about the software and computers than me. Now it's just the opposite: it feels like I'm getting all the harder work because I'm the only one knowledgeable enough to do it. Most of the other QA stuff is, I'll sadly have to admit, unskilled duties. It's clicking the mouse around a GUI. And since I do less of that stuff, I find less actual bugs in my daily work. And since I have a dumb-ass manager who bases QA success on number of defects submitted (regardless of whether or not tehy all get rightfully rejected by laughing developers for not being actual bugs) she thinks I'm not doing enough work that would promote me to the next level. In other words, doing higher-level work is keeping me from getting a higher-level position. Does this make sense? I didn't think so.

My friend Dave just quit his programming job to work on his own thing. And after reading some of the stuff he wrote on the subject of career/calling, I'm wondering just what the hell to do now. I do really want to have a career involving one (if not both) of my two biggest passions: math and music. Maybe, for me, it's just as simple as getting a QA job for math software. That's something I've thought about since I started QA. I love having this 2 1/2 mile commute, but maybe it's time to call up my recruiter again.

Now as for that #2 thing that's bugging me, it's the same thing: I keep writing more and more tiny song ideas, and I don't know where to go from there. It was KILLING me a few nights ago. I couldn't believe it; I was never so frustrated over my lack of output for this idea. Not self-loathing though. I've never been self-loathing about anything. But damn, I was up at 2 AM just listening to these bits of songs, and not knowing where to go next.

I think I just really need a collaborator. Not a poet with a voice, a MUSICIAN. Who's on the same wavelength I am in regards to where I want to go with this. And just one collaborator, because otherwise it will turn into what my major project was in college: two people talking to each other and launching off to do all the work, and one guy being left to do next to nothing.

My brother told me about a fairly accomplished local band who's looking for a bass player. I said I was interested at first, but then I just had to turn down the offer when the guy contacted me. I told him: I have my own music project that I've been putting off for too long, and I can't commit to their (pro-minded) band as much as they'd need. Time to get this shit done first.