I hate it that I have to work harder to have my work noticed than I acually have time to work.
I hate that the new guy, who I had hoped was my replacement so that I could move on to a new contract but turned out to be the guy in charge of politicking so that I could go back to playing with tech and numbers, ignored my request to play with Apache and went and tried to do it himself.
For a week, without the barest mention, he tried to get an ssl authentication to work, and couldn't figure it out.
On Friday, I saw it on his screen and asked what the problem was.
I made suggestions, he frowned and announced that he'd tried all that, and I swallowed the spiralling "geez, I'm no good at anything" bubble in my gut and went to have a fiddle.
Returning, I asked the same questions and it turned out that he hadn't understood them the first time.
Twenty minutes of talking in a gruff, heavy voice and it was working and he was sitting there wide-eyed shaking my hand and announcing just loudly enough for my boss to pretend not to hear that "Wow, you're good..."
A little "I AM APACHE QUEEEN" dance later and my boss is asking me questions, that Nicolas is trying to answer.
An hour of talking in that same as-masculine-as-I-can-get voice later and the boss is writing down my expert answers.
I spent more time fighting to work than I did thinking, at all.
I accomplished nothing spectacular, all the work was in making myself heard.
This is an unusual thing, monstres being far from mouses.
No ego enjoys being ignored, and the mess that all the projects are in because people made decisions over my decisions is an acid ball burning at the lining of my self-confidence.
My teeth are gritted against the meeting with Gemplus on Wednesday, where the man that I fought to have drive up from Marseilles to deal with us for weeks on end, might just turn out to have made the drive for nothing.
This ache pounding away in my temples is from teeth that I am slowly forcing ungritted, as I don my un-corporate jeans and head out the door to wrestle with my bank on a Saturday.
Cross-legged in front of my laptop on the floor, my back to my big golden couch, I look at the light reflecting off my cour and miss the snow-covered rooftops from my previous window.
THere are more worthwhile thoughts bubbling away in the back of my head but I have not the strength to spread them out on careful linen to admire them.
Demain, perhaps. Chop sockey this evening, rollerblading tomorrow, and perhaps after I have exhausted this tension by exhausting my strength, perhaps then I will have time to think larger things.