It's 09:57 in Ogden. I can't help but wonder if I've taken a wrong turn to get where I am today, resetting passwords and fielding technical problems that are beneath the System Adminstrators.

I talked with a student from my alma mater a few weeks ago. It was... nice, really. Missoula is still quite the arts town, the fine arts department is flourishing. She noted it was unusual for a person with a Drama degree to be working in computers. I said, yeah, it is. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.

But where would I be if I had "stayed the course?" Married and divorced, I'm sure, from the woman I was seeing and engaged to at the time. Penniless and defaulted on the $17,000 student loans, almost definitely.

So I joined the Air Force, at least to defer the loans for a while, and was assigned to a new DoD facility, a tenant organization at Hill A.F.B. One thing led to another, and before long, I was married to a lovely local, and later employed as a contractor in the same location.

I've passed up a few opportunities, making essentially the exact opposite mistakes my father made.

Now I'm a father, and I'm wondering which is better: stability, at the risk of stagnation, hypertension, high cholesterol, and hyperglycemia, or semi-(quasi-?) freedom at the risk of living in (near) poverty, possibly affecting my son's self-esteem and self-worth?

I have to get out of this, somehow. I promised myself I would avoid "quiet desperation," but here I am, getting stuck in it.