The disconnect from this j-o-b evolved quickly, and … easily, though with some angst in shifting the conversion of money to time rather than the reverse. After four years of 100% remote, 3.5 years office-bound before that, immersed in the cash-for-time schema, it comes down to the last day, spent mostly shuffling bytes. I did hear from a number of colleagues and one contractor who I worked closely with during the past year, which was nice, also the head of HR sent a pleasant note. She’d been very supportive when I was in deep conflict with the mindless, unimaginative, and utterly toxic prior management of the organization (thanks to her, I won that battle, seeing the asshole off into ignominious retirement a couple years ago!).
The only communications heard from my current boss the last week was “Have a nice weekend.” Late on Friday afternoon. Seemed a bit weird. He’s got plenty other stuff to deal with at the org. Oh well. Ça suffit!
That whole week was about shuffling data and information sets and writing procedural documentation that will likely never get used. Data acquisition, storage, and display has become an end in itself in many organizations: battling externally-applied standards (see the NGMDB‘s GeMS program), and the ever-present profit-motive of market-dominating libertarian vendors seeking to cash in on all steps of the process. At the same time, the binding of the data consumers into various platform ecosystems culls resources at the receiving end. Tired of addressing all the concerns around that. And what of the science that is supposed to be happening? It’s all the same: as the granularity of data acquisition increases, more and more energy has to be applied to organize and analyze the data. This side-tracks reflection, imagination, and even basic synthesis. The path from data to information to knowledge to wisdom is now largely externalized, rather than embodied. AI, the newest arrival in the fray, is injecting itself into the knowledge/wisdom process with a limitless ferocity given asymptotic CPU capacities and the vastness of the overall information space it is learning from. I will not look to AI for wisdom, only as a holographic representation of hubris.
Today is the second “work day” where I’m not working for someone else. My “mines.edu” email account is now defunct. That chapter of life mercifully over. It will take a bit of time to unwrap mind from all the noise that it’s been filled with over the past years. And to embrace what is to come. It’s happening, here, now. Conversations ensue with the network: Finland, Iceland, Germany, and points in between.
The next step, liquidating some assets so that they are more internationally portable: currency. The first big item, prepping and selling the Cedaredge house. Will have some documentation here so if you are looking for a quiet and dark-sky second home, a writing retreat, a plot of land to start a vineyard or apricot orchard, a base for some of the best Nordic skiing in the lower 48, or if you know anyone who might be … lemme know!
Integral to that will be the losing of accumulated stuff, so that the move back to the base in Arizona is less painful. Gotta get to work!
