The sweat drips off my forehead under my hat. The cicadas sing, with an almost overwhelming volume, the sound of the heat, the sound of summer. The soil under my hands is warm, and crumbles easily. The tall grass around me betrays evidence of birds, bugs, and rodents, in the way the fronds twitch and sway in the absence of wind. The scene presents me with a wave of nostalgia, recalling memories of hot summers at the barn, back in Virginia. Laying in the fields with the horses as they munch on grass, the smell of warm dirt, horse, and sometimes the drift of honeysuckle.
I could sit here for hours. The sweat doesn’t bother me, nor does the itch of grass sneaking under my shirt hem, nor the ant that wanders across my ankle, a gentle tickling. I notice these things as they float across my consciousness, and accept them. They feel like a natural state, make me believe that I’m really here, living in the world and not in a screen, a whole network of people and business clawing at my skin.
An unnatural roar punctures the air, sending birds into flight. I can feel the rumble in my chest. It’s an engine test. Frankly I’m shocked that I got as much silence as I did, with the rate of production being what it is nowadays. It’s not uncommon for us to fire off 20 tests in a day.
I push myself up off the ground and brush the dirt and grass off my pants. I’ll catch the next test from the field, I think. It always reminds me of my first few years at the company, back when my problems were hardware, not people.
I’m not feeling inspired today. Some days I’m truly on it, tackling problems before they arise. It feels like I have a sixth sense to see through the bureaucratic bullshit and tell what’s going to happen 10 steps before it does. It’s a good skill to have in today’s world, but the concept that it’s needed, the idea of this world that we’ve built, is so cringeworthy to me that I don’t like to advertise that it’s something I feel competent at. What a world we live in, where manipulation and negotiation are excel spreadsheets are more valuable than the ability to grow food and build shelter.