There are times when one must take a deep, penetrating look at how life treats us. This can be a positive, or negative thing depending on the conclusions you might draw. Personal experience is a powerful teacher, but often a poor historical reference. What I mean is, the mind has no vocabulary, only emotions felt during different events. We then apply words that describe the emotions and visual memories as best as we can.

Sometimes accurately, and other times inaccurately.

Today I face those emotions. Some passer-by might see me at my titanium powerbook and assume I am a well-to-do designer or video professional, perhaps even an Internet guru of some sort. The fact is, like many people in my field, I am an unemployed IT analyst with nothing but this laptop to show for it.