TITLE: Futility and Ditch Digging
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: April 24, 2010  1:25 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
First, Chuck Hoffman
<A HREF="https://twitter.com/nothinghappens/status/12723718838">
 tweeted</A>,
<EM>The life of a code monkey is frequently depressingly futile</EM>.

I had had a long week, filled with the sort of activities
that can make a programmer pine for days as a code monkey,
and I
<A HREF="https://twitter.com/wallingf/status/12724337539">
 replied</A>,
<EM>Life in many roles is frequently depressingly futile.
Thoreau was right</EM>.

The ever-timely Brian Foote
<A HREF="https://twitter.com/bigballofmud/status/12727800051">
   reminded me</A>:

<BLOCKQUOTE><B>
Sometimes utility feels like futility,
but someone's gotta do it.
</B></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanks, Brian.  I needed to hear that.

I remember hearing an interview with musician
<A HREF="http://www.mellencamp.com/">
   John Mellencamp</A>
many years ago in which he talked about making the movie
<A HREF="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104225/">
   Falling from Grace</A>.
Th interviewer was waxing on about the creative process
and how different movies were from making records, and
Mellencamp said something to the effect of, "A lot of
it is just ditch digging: one more shovel of dirt."
Mellencamp knew about that sort of manual labor
because he had done it, digging ditches and stringing
wire for a telephone company before making it as an
artist.  And he's right: an awful lot of every kind
of working is moving one more shovel of dirt.  It's
not romantic, but it gets the job done.
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