A stranger on the bus sits, reading the paper.

I’ve learned over the four years I’ve live in Maryland that everyone chats up everyone. Even the surliest faces open up to conversation, if but to break the palpable silence sometimes experienced in public transportation. I’ve also learned that usually I don’t have to initiate anything, though in this particular encounter it was my turn to start things.

As the title says, I think his name was Ryan. I don’t remember it for sure, but I remember the details like it was yesterday. Born and raised in MD and now living in Berkeley, he was at American University for that weekend for some folk music deal thingie. Trite details that hold no real weight in the scheme of things, really.

His return trip home, however, gained a greater sense of urgency once he found out that the cell phone of one his lady friends was found at a park, and that no one has heard from her in two days. She may have just lost it and there’s no other way for people to contact her. She may have been in trouble.

I would never know, really. But I hope she is okay.

My moleskine, and the ex libris I wrote when I got it.

When I first read of the Moleskine from Stephan (from this post), I thought to myself, Such indulgence for a notebook!

Granted, ever since I graduated high school (and not having owned a computer of any sort until I graduated college) I have kept written journals, written in specialty (or novelty) imported notebooks from South Korea.* Those, I burned when I moved to the USA. They contained my most private of thoughts over four years, and the time came that they died a well-deserved death. To this day I don’t regret any of it.

In the years since I have lived in the USA, I never wrote in one of those ever again. Somehow everything that I had been occupied with just stood in the way. In the beginning, maintaining a fledgeling blog was good enough to pour out my thoughts. As I cycled from journal blogger to political commentator and back to where I am now, I find that there was something missing when I would sit down in front of the computer to write.

There was some sort of disconnect I could not get my finger on.

Imagine my delight, then, when I took the pen to my new notebook and started writing. For the first time in the many months since I started my night shift job, it felt good to write!

So here I am now, writing about how much I like writing again. Perhaps none of you will ever see what is in my Moleskine, but having a distinct place for my private thoughts has unclogged the pipe, so to speak, for the words meant for all of you.

* (On a very digressive note, I found that there is a Morning Glory store within 30 miles of where I live. Also, while I haven’t gone to that store yet, my notebooks were far more minimalistic in design than those found in this online store. Most of them had a plain pastel color and some nonsensical quote in what I call Engrish.)

Freedom board, up close, at UMCP

Without giving too much detail about my work, I do data entry from 8:00p through 4:30a with overtime as required to get the work done, which in my case usually amounts to an hour, to an hour and a half each day.

Each night is an endless parade of music thanks to my music players (first my Treo 650 and now my Sandisk m250) and the awful, green screen of a DOS-based form for the data on a terminal that reminds me of my youth. Like almost all work, it is repetitive, but I am mostly left alone to my own devices provided I stay productive and non-disruptive.

Work is split into groups, with, ideally, four data entry people in a group. This week, since Monday, we’ve had two and a half, as one of our people is on vacation, and the one person we pulled does about 75% of what the vacationing person does. Half, because she starts after 1am to help us out.

I ask not pity for the job that I have chosen to pay my bills and fatten my bank account, just for the pads of my fingers, which these days feel like the wood on a freedom board, riddle with industrial-size staples.

In that light, if I have any obligations for web work for any of you whom I have served in the past, it’s not just a matter of time, as I get enough sleep and waking hours. It’s just that these days my fingers are tired.