I’ve always been a word person. For a while I was an actual wordsmith and, at one point, I almost became a professional editor. Those skills have long since atrophied to the pathetic state I now inflict upon you poor folks.
For me, words sing. If they’re happy enough, they may even dance. 
Numbers, on the other hand, do not. At best, they just sit there on the page. At worst, they actively taunt me. Numbers hold few, if any secrets I care about, and those they may hold, they’re extremely reluctant to share with me. Words, however, are my friends. I’ve neglected them, frequently abuse them with typo’s, and I’ve lost touch with so many, and yet they continue to welcome me back, share their special insights with me, commune with me.
This, in spite of the fact that I torment their ambassador, my inner poet, on a daily basis. You see, instead of becoming an editor, and spending my days amongst my little, verbose friends, I became a software engineer. I spend my days writing stuff like this;
<xsl:for-each select="//Record">
<xsl:sort select=“Field[@name=‘RefPName’]/@value” order=“ascending”/>
<xsl:element name=“Provider”>
<xsl:attribute name=“id”><xsl:value-of select="./Field[@name=‘PNID’]/@value"/></xsl:attribute>
<xsl:attribute name=“description”><xsl:value-of select="./Field[@name=‘RefPName’]/@value"/></xsl:attribute>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:for-each>
Lyrical, isn’t it? Be glad you don’t have to read the specifications and techinical reference I have to force myself read. I’d honestly rather watch grass grow. Or, have another root canal. Reading this stuff is like watching dust accumulate. Needless to say, my inner poet is not a happy camper. This is also on top of having had to deliberately “dumb down” my vocabulary, so as not to elicit odd looks and rude jokes from my coworkers, at various places. And, we’ll just lightly pass over (Oh, yeah! Happy Passover! ;j ) the occasional comaprison of my speech patterns to those of truck drivers, sailors, and dock workers, shall we?
So, my inner poet is well and truly tortured, on a nearly continuous basis. And, frankly, I’d just as soon keep him under wraps, anyway. He gets these grandiose delusions of adequacy, if left unfettered. He is persistent, though. I have to give him credit, where it’s due. If I get overly tired, depressed, or just unusually emotional, the little rat will do his best to take over the controls. It’s something I have to be on guard against, all the time. Even so, he will manage to sneak the occasional melodramatic or brilliantly vermillion (:rolleyes: …excuse me for a second, folks…whip cracks Back, ya’ little fiend!..that’s his way of saying colorful) phrase into something I’m writing. Fortunately, he’s less able to control my speech, but he’s pretty good at sneaking down my arms, to the keyboard. But, I guess eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, as the wise man said. In this case, freedom from ridicule. Because, basically, he’s a maudlin little sh!t.
