I pierced my tongue last night and it annoyed the crap out of me. That statement sounds terribly odd by itself, but it lead me on a mental path that is making me voluntarily blog. What a shock, right?
Those of you that have known me for any significant amount of time know that I used to be into body piercing. Not excessively so, and mostly piercings that were easily hidden. The last piercing I had inflicted upon myself before I took them all out was a tongue piercing. This is a fairly typical piercing, not at all a big deal. The fact that the pain is minimal/nonexistant combined with the connotations involved in having such a piercing made it quickly mainstream, although it's not so common now. (Maybe it is with the younger folk, and I just don't know it. It seems like everyone I hang out with nowadays has a UNIX beard, so me being out of touch with the latest trends isn't all that farfetched.) Considering the types of piercings I had previous experience with, it may seem surprising that I got my tongue pierced last. The truth is that I have a freakishly short tongue, and it took me well over a year and a half to find a piercer that would agree to try without me undergoing outpatient surgery first. I liked piercings, but I wasn't about to have the skin under my tongue cut just so I could stab it with some metal. I was incredibly happy when the deed was finally done, probably because I had been told that it was never going to happen. From that day on, anytime I got bored, I'd run the piercing across my teeth to make rapid-fire clicking sounds, much to the annoyance of anyone around me. Life was good.
Although I took all my piercings out within two years of that day, I kept my jewelry around. I didn't intend to use it, I'm just naturally a pack rat. Every once in a while, I'd come across the box I had saved my jewelry in, and I'd feel nostalgic, so I'd stab myself in the tongue. I've been told that most tongue piercings heal fairly quickly after the jewelry is removed, but mine stuck around. I'd have to deal with some resistance, but it wasn't like it was a new piercing each time. It was a difficult urge to resist, since I bought such pretty jewelry, like my sandblasted perdot flower with amethyst petals. After a few days, the jewelry would come out, get cleaned, and go back in the box.
At some point years ago, I lost that jewelry box. I've moved so many times, I don't even want to think about how many treasured possessions that have accidentally been discarded of along the way. However, when I was unpacking random odds and ends last night, I stumbled across my favorite amethyst topped barbell. What the hell, I thought, and I stabbed my tongue. It took a little bit more effort than it used to since it's been such a long time, but I eventually persevered. I looked in the mirror, stuck out my tongue, and laughed at myself. It felt weird. Not so much in a there's-something-in-my-mouth-that-shouldn't-be-there way, but weird because it felt like I was playing dress up. It didn't feel like me. I went back to cleaning and unpacking, but as I worked I got progressively more annoyed at the hateful metal bar harassing my tongue. I hated the distraction, but what really bugged me was that I hated it at all. I started to wonder: what had happened to me?
For lack of a better phrase, I started taking things seriously. Sometimes I feel like I've undergone some sort of radical personality and values shift that has left me completely bewildered. For example, in a few weeks a male friend that's part of the FreeBSD project is flying in to help me get over freaking out about BSDCan. My not-so-big secret is that I think FreeBSD people are completely terrifying. Every time I get into a conversation with someone from core, there's a voice in my head looping on "HOLY CRAP, DON'T TALK, YOU'RE GOING TO SAY SOMETHING STUPID AND THEY WILL LAUGH AT YOU AND KICK YOU OUT." Two years ago, I didn't have this problem. What's even worse is that I'm now spending more time freaking out about this guy coming to visit than I am about BSDCan. Uh, mission accomplished? I've never cared all that much about anyone's opinion of me before. Let's face it, with all the rumors/gossip/trash-talking about me on the internet, not caring was the only reasonable thing to do. I developed a thick skin, and it's helped me when times got tough. I thought I was doing a good job of doing my own thing and fuck what everyone else thinks, but now he is coming here, and all I can think about is my quirky personality (which is putting it quite kindly - batshit insane is the term I usually use), and what if he sees who I really am and thinks poorly of me? As silly as it sounds, I've spent years being FreeBSDGirl around these people and not Randi. Sure, they probably have a good idea that I'm a bit of an airhead, but I'm a dedicated and stubborn airhead. This guy has always been different. I can't think of anyone I respect more than him. He's known me since just after I first started running FreeBSD. For some reason, he didn't completely disregard me as a useless airhead, or even worse, an open source groupie, as seems to be the wont with most open source groups when it comes to newcomer females - especially females that talk on IRC a lot and write mediocre code at best. I don't tell him everything, but I do go to him for disaster recovery, and he's always been there for me. We've talked online for years, but we only see each other once a year at BSDCan, and I spend most of that time hiding from him. How stupid is that? What the hell is wrong with me? This, however, is a completely different tangent and totally not where I was trying to take this blog entry. FreeBSDGirl will not be blushing because of some internet guy tonight, thank you very much.
I can't reconcile my life now with who I was two years ago. This isn't to say that I'm not happy with the way things turned out; I'm thrilled. It's the life I didn't even know that I was capable of having, but how much did I give up to get it? I'm still very much the airhead that I was before, but it rarely gets a chance to come out since I'm spending 90% of my life on FreeBSD. This is no exaggeration. Between my job (a company that uses FreeBSD), commitments I have made (meetBSD, BSDCan, and now GSoC), my goals (to remain unnamed at this point), projects I'm trying to get myself up to speed on (sysinstall and others), I'm too busy to even blog what I'm up to. That 10% that's left is spent reading, talking to my roommate, playing with my cats, and relearning how to play piano. I'll sleep when I'm dead.
Don't get me wrong, I loved FreeBSD 2 years ago, but I wasn't pushing myself all that hard. I spent more time than I'd like to admit partying and wasting time. I would chastise myself for not getting more serious, but I couldn't stop being such a complete flake. When did this change? How? Occasionally when I'm walking across my room getting ready for bed, I'll catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror out of the corner of my eye and wonder who is in the room with me. At what point did I stop being the crazy redheaded pierced party girl and start being the driven, dedicated, normal looking grown up with a perfectly sane hair color?
I realize that 27 is an advanced age to finally being thinking of one's self as being a grown up, but please consider the industry in which I work. The amount of "perks" we get are ridiculous: free soda, free candy, catered lunches, all the video games you can handle, alcohol in the office in the middle of a work day, no dress code, pick your own hours or even work from home, and no expectations of the subdued behavior one would have expected to see in an office 15 years ago. Garbage's "When I Grow Up" is the engineer theme song.
I'm not blaming the IT companies for this - if an employee can't get a specific perk that they want from their current employer, they'll find a new one. Also, none of these statements are directed at my employer. It's just a observation about IT in general.
Working in an industry that caters so heavily to our inner children, it makes me wonder what my generation is going to be like when we hit 50.
I can't decide if this phenomenon is a bad thing or not. Unlike most children, when I was 10, I dreaded the idea of getting older. My parents had crap jobs that made them miserable. At least I got summer vacation, but what did adults get? I didn't see my parents getting any respite from the seemingly unending drudgery of their lives, so naturally, I wanted to stay a kid forever. Not 8 years later, we had the dot-com boom, and my wish was granted. As much as I may sometimes want to shake my head in disgust at the current situation, I don't want it to change. I'm selfish like that. I sometimes worry about what would happen if circumstances were to change. Remember Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka? That's us in a nutshell, and we all remember how that turned out.
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