I tend to think that I live a fairly mundane life and that it would not be very exciting for anyone to follow me around and investigate my activities.  I work staring at a computer all day, mostly moving data from one place to another, and then maybe to still another place within the course of the day.  I get up in the morning and read and write a bit, and leave work and eat and do the same.  I do this day in and day out, and when I go to other places, it is usually related to church or some aspect of community service that I am involved in.   I am a creature of particular habits, including a love of chicken and sweet tea, and so it ought not to be too terribly surprising that I do not think these patterns and habits are all that interesting.  Even so, a day like today provided plenty of interest, and reminded me that sometimes interesting can be an overrated quality [1].  This is not to say that uninteresting is good, but that interesting is not always good either.

In all fairness, today was at least a pleasant day by my standards, aside from the fact that I had multiple nosebleeds, which were at least contained well enough not to be a problem.  I had books to read that were enjoyable to read courtesy of Hendrickson Publishers.  I was able to be productive at work and even manage to pass the annual HIPAA refresher without any trouble.  I was part of a lengthy set of discussions about software at work, all of which made life at least a little bit more interesting, and it was interesting in a good way, one which made life a bit more enjoyable.  All things considered, if the day was a long one it was at least a pleasant enough one that I did not feel as if the day presented anything too unpleasant for me aside from my nose, and that is a common enough problem I did not let it trouble me overmuch.

That is more than I can say for others.  Looking at hurricanes, which is one of my favorite activities to do, I had the chance to see that a particularly warm Gulf of Mexico meant that a Tropical Storm quickly intensified to a hurricane and is supposed to become a major hurricane before making landfall and stalling over the coastal areas of Texas.  To be sure, the threat of a major hurricane making landfall in a couple of days after having crossed the Yucatan Peninsula as only a tropical depression is interesting, but it is definitely not a good type of interesting.  I have driven through tropical storms, and while they are not very much fun to drive through, one can do it if one is sufficiently grimly determined, as I tend to be.  A major hurricane, though, is nothing to mess with, not least when it threatens to dump between one and three feet of rain in addition to substantial storm surge.  A major hurricane is nothing to be trifled with indeed, and is something that definitely qualifies as one of the less enjoyable ways that life can be interesting.

My discussion with a coworker about HIPAA prompted a reminder that there are many ways that interesting can be bad.  A health insurance carrier I am very familiar with had an interesting day in a bad way when it apparently revealed the HIV status of thousands of its customers and sent them to who knows whom.  Now, that is not something that I have ever had any cause to be very worried about, but when it comes to sensitive information, that is among the most sensitive information I can imagine, especially as there would be fairly obvious questions asked about sexuality and recreational habits that would result from such a diagnosis, and a great deal of shame and embarrassment that results from having that sort of matter exposed in such a way.  Professionals in health care are held to a very high standard of confidentiality when it comes to such information, and such a breach of trust will have some major repercussions when it comes to stiff financial penalties as well as a major harm to their reputations.  Perhaps a relatively uninteresting life is not such a bad thing when compared to this sort of trouble?  There are worse things than living a very modest life full of gentle rhythms and consistent patterns, after all.

[1] See, for example:

May You Live An Interesting Life

The Hunt For 0141

The Fruit Of The Spirit’s Not A Coconut

Take Me To The River

Everything In Threes