This is what it takes for Catie (C.E. Murphy, world-famous author and graphic novelist) to be pleased with herself.  I feel, in her shoes, I would be pleased as well.  And my feet would hurt, ’cause, well, big feet compared to Catie’s.

I suspect I don’t need that intensity of accomplishment to be pleased…and, with the recurring fecal storms that eat my brain, I think it might be productive for me to find out — if not where the line of please/displeased is exactly — what zipcode it has on its mailing address.

‘Course, the yardstick might be different from day to day, but that doesn’t make the question without merit.

I have a customer.  He wanted me to hold his hand while he tried some fairly complex SQL code on his own.  When it became evident that he was never going to take the time to learn the db he was taking the data from (and was thereby failing), I told him I could do the work myself as a billable service or he could be on his own.

He chose to accept my work as a billable service.  Fine.

It has since become clear that, if he knows what he wants, he doesn’t wish to tell me.  I have finally resorted to, over and over, asking him to please give me about three mocked-up records from his hypothetical output to demonstrate what he is looking for.  In answer to this (three times so far today) he keeps sending me the code he was working with when he admitted that he didn’t know what he was doing.

How can he possibly believe that offering me code that DOESN’T DO WHAT HE WANTS IT TO DO is going to help me produce code that does?

I think he doesn’t know what he wants, and is afraid to admit it.  I can’t explain his behavior any other way.

Rose City Romance Writers, of whom I am a member, met yesterday, and I was in attendance.  This was my second meeting.

My initial goal in joining RCRW was twofold; to do something that, monthly, would remind me that I have mentioned from time to time that I want to write professionally, and to get Lisa off my back follow Lisa’s suggestion because it was good and wise and I agreed with it.  In fact, Lisa was right, and I’ve considered this at some length.

Which, for a change, I won’t recount here.  It has to do with, where you put your time and your money, there, too, will go your life, for if you don’t follow the metrics of your life you suggest by implication that you have squandered them.  Fair enough, and borne out by my experience; since last meeting I’ve been moving back toward the writing.  Good.

At the meetings there is opportunity to declare goals.  To do this, one writes down a measurable goal and throws the script, with a dollar, into the pot.  Next meeting the goals will be assessed; those successfully met will be entered as tickets in a drawing, and the money from all the goals is won by one of those who met theirs.

The chance to win is as nothing to me; I have little belief in luck, for all that I have the scintillating, tripped-on-winning-lottery-ticket sort.  The opportunity to fail means something, though.  ”Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes” — that’s about right, and if the stakes aren’t mortal, at least there are stakes.  I like having stakes, however slim, in games I play.  And there’s the stuff I mentioned about money, above.  Thus, this meeting, I entered three goals:

• I will write each Sunday (and perhaps other days, but at least then) between now and next meeting
• I will complete my (first draft of) Christmas short story by next meeting
• I will write a flash fiction (probably with Lisa) and submit it professionally by next meeting

My money was tendered, and I am laid bare to the potential of a soul-rending failure; my goals unmet, my declaration of accomplishment shown to be so much air, and three dollars gone from my pocket — or success, wild success, such as has never been known by man nor god.

Well then.  Off to the mills for me.  I’ve coffee at elbow, detective-story jazz on Pandora, and my chores largely done for the day.  I believe it’s time for the Toughest Christmas Elf to get roughed up by some shady characters.

ETA:  Wrote.