It's about my brain, and also men. I was just getting to where I could feel more of my feelings, like the range of beautiful keys on a piano. Somehow this new job requires my brain to be more structured, I think. In order to survive and do this job, my brain has built up honeycombs and segments; compartmentalized itself. I don't like this because the really big ideas, the really fun ones come from connecting parts of my brain that are far from each other. From rubbing disparate things against each other. From floating random facts around. But now my brain is like an ice cube tray. Like the bead boxes my daughter uses. keeping everything separate. It's like having your clothes in rubbermaid containers with lids instead of in a pile on the floor. In the pile clothes will be next to each other that would never come into contact if I were organized into winter and summer and panties and t-shirts. My brain feels dry and restricted. At first I thought about drilling hol! es in the separators. The juices could flow around, but not the gray matter. Then I thought of picking gray matter up with tweezers and moving it around, dropping it in random compartments. But that wasn't enough to really make a difference. Then I had the venetian blinds idea. I could move the separators like venetian blinds. Then I would have planar sections of brain, but still not the whole brain. Perhaps I could open the blinds different ways. It helps some. But what I want is more like the ocean. More like beads of water on flat glass. Oh, and I also want to be able to keep this job, with the extra money to put my kids through college. My daughter observes that people who feel all their feelings, wallow in them, don't have much achievement in this world. Don't get to social and economic "success". But the price for success is high. I'm not willing to give up my feelings. I want the separators to be made of wax, I could then perhaps melt the wax. I find th! at when I can't feel my own feelings, I can't feel the feelings of anyone around me, either. And then I can't really do my job, either. All this makes me mourn for men. Empathize with men. They have been expected to do these jobs that require so much structure of the brain. Then expected to demolish the structure and be emotional when they arrive home. I find that to be impossible for me. This problem is my brain's chance to grow. My chance to decide how many of my feelings I'm willing to sell for a trip to New York, a trip to New Orleans, all the trips I will buy with the money from the job. I know I am keeping both, the job and my feelings. If any brain can figure this out, mine can.