This File Sorter’s Life
by Bill Burton
08/04/10
Author's Note:
This is not an autobiography of the following sort:
An inspiring tale of progression from formlessness to order, from first inchoate infant memories – light-blue, plastic, toy keys jangling from the dangling mobile in hazy morning sunshine above the crib – to awareness, eventual maturity, and finally success; how through a series of well-planned and intentional advances, regardless of temporary setbacks, the subject of the story manages to assert mastery over his environment and, more to the point, its fellow inhabitants to achieve that single thing X, or in the case of some gifted polymaths even a series of remarkable things X2, thereby vindicating his apparent missteps along the way (that degree in Irish Lit?..all part of the overall plan) and establishing his life narrative as unique and eminently well-lived, or at least moderately even if only intermittently interesting and coming to a climax proportionate to the time spent reading.
That one’s still in the draft stages.
I’m thinking of starting out actually with a couple of purely fictional sketches based on my current decidedly dull and far from noteworthy job as professional electronic file sorter ; something in the office-drone-unwittingly-uncovers-State-Secrets spy-thriller genre.
I’ll follow that up maybe with a chapter or two explaining what I was thinking when I did X and X2, how it actually all makes sense in the context of my soon to be completed project:
Chapter 1: How I Came Across Something Strange in the Dell Translation Memory
Work in progress..