After a good sleepless night, a 15 click run on sunday in snow birthing temperatures, and a suffering day at work examining oil project economics with stiff legs I'm dead set where I'm going.

I never enrolled in engineering to sit behind a desk in an office with no window to scope out projects that I'll never see finished, or perhaps even started.

I'm just loaning my brain and my time, to get something kicked off. I'm stressing and burning away, using every intellectual effort I can manage plot and plan so a company can make a couple of million a day and somewhere down the line a couple of hundred tonnes of green house gas will get released all because I kept resharpening my pencil.

Meanwhile, a welder ten years younger than me with 6 months of training, makes quadruple my salary in half as much time.

I joined engineering for nuts & bolts work. I joined for design. I wanted to make cool things; I wanted to build STUFF and change peoples lives. I wanted to solve problems and not contribute to existing ones.

So in retrospect, I didn't really try to get out of this oil stuff. I said I wanted to. I even half heartedly applied else where, but I took what was easy.

I'm going to bust out now.