Tuesday, October 21, 2008

in which I try not to talk about kittens but fail

Nadja, the white foster kitten, is back at the Humane Society for observation. Over the past week, Mouse has gotten very active and playful, but Nadja remained very quiet. She loves people and would jump up to your shoulder at every chance she'd get, but she wasn't very active. On Sunday, I picked up both kittens to put them in the spare room for the night and noticed that Mouse was substantially bigger and noticeable heavier than Nadja. Just out of curiosity, I weighed them on the kitchen scale. Mouse weighed about 700 grams, but Nadja weighed only about 400. She's not eating for some reason; don't know if she's being bullied by Mouse or has stomach issues. I hope she's ok; and that's she's not ill because of something I did or didn't do. 

(At this moment, Mouse is fascinated by the end of my nose. She's sitting on my chest--why does every single cat love to sit on my chest?--and keeps sniffing and nibbling the end of my nose.)

In non-feline news, I am participating in a Value Engineering study this week. I only agreed to it because I am rather slow at work and this is a whole week of project chargeable work, but while I find it very interesting to listen to the project, I don't think I'm actually adding anything. In the whole two days so far, the only thing I've contributed was knowing what is the minimum height of a bike path (8 feet for bikes/pedestrians, 10 feet if equestrians are allowed). So I've been feeling bored and useless which is making me a bit depressed. I wouldn't feel quite so bad except my boss is a participant as well, so I can't even head out and go back to the office. 

And the PE exam is on Friday, which has only increased my stress. I am so unprepared. I am unprepared because I am unmotivated. But I am stressed because I feel like I should be motivated. I've been working as an engineer for the past eight years, and I've pretty much chosen this as a career path, so suck it up all ready! Everyone I know who studied engineering was really interested in the subject. I was not interested in the subject and so I didn't study engineering at university, and a lot of my career anxiety stems from ending up in a profession that doesn't really fascinate me. Parts are interesting, yes. But am I motivated to read Engineering Today and find out about new types of bridge construction and different types of retaining walls? Not especially. So I feel like a fraud. And so I feel like a fraud like me shouldn't even have a PE license. And so I am unmotivated to study. But I stress anyway, because I feel like I should be more interested.  blah blah blah in an endless cycle. However, since I was slow at work, I was spending my down time studying the topics I didn't do very well in last time. Which was essentially the topics I wasn't all that interested in. 

Ah well, enough bellyaching. Back to the books. Fluid dynamics!!! 

2 comments:

Me said...

Good luck on the test Friday, I will be down here in California doing the exact same thing... And hey it could be worse, you could have state specific exams on Saturday too... Sometimes CA sucks more than usual...

CarpeDyem said...

I understand about being in a career that doesn't interest or motivate. I've had this ebb and flow for a few years now. My passion has left me, it's just a job now.