They’ve sent me to a conference on Disaster Recovery. I just listened to a speech by a United States Senator. In the bathroom, I heard Janis Joplin, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Bobby McGee meet Paul Sarbanes.

In another session at DRJ, listening to a talk on pandemic planning, thinking how out of place I am, wondering if there’s anyone else here who cares less about this than I do. This might eventually cause a problem with my job. The attitude has existed in me for a long time, through school, through many jobs. Why? And why write about it and why write about it now? (87% of people who contracted H5N1 last year died).
The first speaker yesterday talked about having a conversation with your brain. I want to write more about that later. I also want to write about who writes, the outsiders, loners, who snap and then the authorities find these random long-winded nonsensical journals. I was thinking about that this morning and have decided to put the thought down here in my journal.

Learning that a woman in Egypt, in order to prove her merchandise does not have bird flu, feeds her pigeons by chewing up corn and putting the pigeon’s head in her mouth, and seeing a picture of it, has made this whole trip worthwhile. That’s good marketing.
It just occurred to me as I was trying to figure out how this could possibly be relevant to me, that the idea of pandemic is embedded in my talking cat/eagle/deer story. How would infertility spread? What would happen to a society that slowly discovered they were infected. If the symptoms didn’t show until people tried to reproduce, which would take a while, it would give the virus a large amount of time to spread.
Writing about writing. I’ve been doing a lot of writing about writing and very little actual writing. The stories are stagnant. Lots of self-examination and blah blah blah.
I’m more concerned about not working on my stories than not working on this job. Although, that could change quickly. If I can get away with not doing stuff I will try to. What does this say about me? I’m forty years old and have the attention span of a four year old.
Back to that first speaker and his conversation with his brain…