(Phaysis)

My new job…oh my god, my head is constantly on the verge of exploding. Not a day goes by that my eyes don’t glaze over from being overwhelmed by new information. It has been a long time since I’ve needed to use my brain to hold bits and pieces of minor and major data. My old job was mostly physical and partly figuring out what a machine was doing and how to make it do it better. Once the weekend hit, I forgot the week; now I don’t really have that luxury. It will take me a long time to rebuild the mental faculties that I’ve let slip away in the past N years. I guess that’s the hardest part of the new job: the trying to keep up, trying to not crack. Gives me pause to wonder.

But the job is good, more or less. Pay is respectable. Coworker environment is pleasant but determined, hurried. We have a product hitting the market in a few months, and right now my lab is busy trying to come up with performance numbers that will go into the finalized product. The longer we take, the later the product ships, so we’re pretty damned busy. Helluva time to start training.

I’m wrapping up my second week, and I’ll admit that my manager’s words are true: “The first two weeks are like sipping water from a raging firehose.” I’ll most likely feel that way for another two weeks as I’m taking the time to get up to speed on things. I’m catching little bits, jumping in and helping my trainer by doing some of the more mundane things; but what I’m missing is the bigger picture, the outline of the workflow, what is expected when testing a new part, what numbers are required, what tests are required to get them. I’ll learn all that in due time naturally, but I sense that I’ll have to insert some initiative to learn them faster. It’s not really a job where all relevant data is fed to me automatically. I have to ask the right questions.

Today, I watched a bird suffer and die.

I was finishing my meal at a chinese restaurant, about to crack open the fortune cookie, when I heard a rattling slap on the window to my left. Seeing no one outside, I looked down to see what had hit the window and there it was, fluttering on the sidewalk. Small grey bird with generic brown markings, short but pointed beak in black. The beak was curled downward at the tip, most likely from the impact. Five people trickled by in the first minute; it fluttered and tried to get away from them but got no further than two feet from where it landed. The people noticed, some bent over to see it, but sensing the need for more help than they could invest, they walked on. And I sat inside watching.

I don’t know if the wind was knocked out of it. I don’t know if it was dazed, but for a bird its movements were erratic. The damage was obvious. It pulled its wings in, tried to get up on its feet but failed in standing. Its head twitched and its mouth was open as it tried to breathe. The breaths were deep and fast, and then shallow and fast, and then its eyes lowered and closed. The breaths were shallow and slow, and then nothing. A few seconds of motionlessness, and then its tail and legs twitched. I have seen a death rattle.

The fortune cookie read, “You will be showered with good fortune.”

The horror of death is to die alone and unnoticed. I could not help this bird to live, but I was there to help make its unfortunate death meaningful. I paid attention. The biblical verse of Luke 12:6 says “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.” This bird will not go forgotten.