Drowning.

This morning I had a meeting with a client and her printer rep contact. This woman was quite a character. First of all, one of her daughters had just gotten into a very bad automobile accident. She wasn't wearing a seatbelt and smashed her face and body pretty good into the steering wheel and dashboard. The printer rep told the story about when she went to the hospital, seeing her for the first time after the accident, starting with her bloody boots that were beside her bed, to her mangled leg, to her smashed up face. Her motherly and unchecked reaction made the daughter cry.

She told the story hidden behind an almost comical veil, as if she were telling a "good one" about a humorous encounter at the grocery store. I couldn't help but to take it all in: her facial expressions, her chosen words, the knowledge that she didn't know me at all and was freely talking about something so serious, her appearance of being completely unbothered by her daughter's situation while simultaneously emitting an aura of deep concern...

It was fascinating.

The entire drive back to work from the meeting, I thought about how interesting she was. Not that I liked her or disliked her, but that I just found all of the elements around this human being so intriguing and pleasantly compelling. Maybe what romanced me so much was I felt a security through the recognition of her as a person.

And then I thought about the time where I thought I had come up with a fresh idea to write and collect true stories about people. Just ordinary people, and their ordinary but captivating lives...but showcasing their lives in a thought-provoking way. But it had already been done on NPR through StoryCorps. Of course it had.

And then I thought about how much I hate what I'm doing at my job.

I feel like I can be more, do more, create more and show the world (or maybe just the city) more and it is frustrating the hell out of me. I'm drowning in work. Not in the volume of work as it has been so many times before, but in the substance. I am better than this. I need to figure out how to make my talents useful.