I am so glad today...

... that I don't work for NASA.

There are days when as a technical director I really think that somewhere along the way I screwed up. I mean, at the end of the day at my job, its just a show. In fact now I can fall back to "It's just a school play." Its a little mantra some of us in theatre repeat to ourselves when something isn't working. But really, there are days when I lust for significance - for the work to be more meaningful.

And then, then there are days like today. Days when I am absolutely certain that as lousy and stressful as my day might be it can't be as bad as that other guy's day - the guy with the meaningful gig.

I don't know if you noticed it earlier today, but a project manager at NASA (their technical directors) had a very bad day. Billions of dollars and six years of work literally crashed into the Utah desert, apparently due to faulty equipment. Failing like that, so catastrophically and so publicly must be awful. This isn't shodenfreud. Understand I am not happy this happened to this guy (I don't know for certain it is a guy), I am just so totally stoked that it didn't happen to me.

I remember a few years ago I had some very high profile projects, things that ran on national television. I sat at home watching TV, or for one spent the entire night in an LA hotel room, praying that the next camera shot wouldn't be something I engineered falling over on David Brinkley or Bill Clinton. In my world I guess that's as close as I will get to NASA project manager. I can't imagine the stress these guys live with. Their projects go for so much longer, involve so many more people, and cost so much money. Ugh. Today I was glad I went into theatre.

So, I ask the 2.2 people that read this to send out good vibes to those people at NASA, picking up the pieces - literally, who had a really lousy day.