Words are inadequate

These days it feels like everything is getting said twice, just to make sure I hear it. "Live deliberately" you said in an earlier comment; in different words I had just gotten that far myself. (I figure as long as I have a pretty good idea why I do what I do, I'll be alright-- if it's a reason I deem insufficient or just plain bad, I can change my action.)

I suspect that I could enjoy programming, and that I could be decent at it. But I'd hate the discipline and the three years' work necessary to get a degree in it, and I'm fairly sick of small software companies anyway. With about two exceptions the people I hang out with are either working in CS or working on working in CS, though, so it is taking / has taken effort to say "This is not what I want to do."

While talking with my parents a week and a half ago they tried to convince me that the answer to having a job you hate is to find the good things about that job and think about those, instead of the bad things. This strikes me as the wrong way to go about it: first you figure if the good things outweigh the bad; if so, then you do the accentuate-the-positive routine. If not, it's clearly time to check out. So, it was nice to be backed up by The Neil when I got back to Xiansburg.

Re:ligion: thanks for taking time to ponder. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.