One of the things I like best about working on my own, other than not wearing shoes or being around people who dislike me, is sipping beer at my desk on a rainy afternoon. You could never institute a "drink beer at work" policy in a regular office. Someone would just take things to far, and end up barfing into the paper tray of the xerox machine, and ruin it for everybody. That, in allegory, is the power of the individual as opposed to the collective.

I've been working on a website project, pro bono, for a fundraising event sponsored by a couple AIDS-prevention organizations in the DC area. Having worked in the reproductive health field before starting this business, I've heard the grim stats on my adopted town: HIV infection rate in the Washington Metro area is 20 times the national average. Fifty percent of new HIV cases are among people under 24 years old, giving DC the highest rate of adolescent HIV infection in the nation. That seems like a legitimate reason to donate a little time.

When I got around to estimating just how much time it's been, the answer came back at around $3,000 worth, and quickly mounting. I'm not sure my non-clients realize just how much labor they're getting for free, and I'm certainly not going to tell them. I'm just hoping these points in my karmic bank will do my soul some good.

No I'm not. I can't conceal it any more. What I really hope is that this pro-bono deal will net me some new clients. I'm secretly anticipating that someone on the event committee will think I'm so handy that they'll ask me to submit a bid on a larger and more giddily greed-inducing website.

In my defense, I would point out that 1) I want the money to fund a month-long writing sabbatical for next year, and 2) no matter how mercenary my intentions may be, these AIDS-prevention organizations are still getting a free website worth thousands of dollars of labor. But let's face it: every two-bit sinner sent screaming into the saw-toothed maws of Hell goes down shrieking protestations of innocence. We all have our foolish stories to justify the crap we pull.

Does our intent provide the real measure of the goodness of our actions? Did Jimmy C really sin when he felt lust in his heart? Or is the smallest good deed better than the grandest good intention?

My former-drug-addict-turned-born-again fundamentalist Christian friend Ian once told me that nothing I did had any meaning unless I did it for Christ. I spent most days working on an ambulance, up to my keister in human goo and holding on to fleeting human lives with both hands, so I did not take this assertion very well. I pointed out, a wee bit self-righteously, that I was out saving lives while he was kicking back in his fraternity house in Cleveland. Surely my work was meaningful?

It was not, in his view. Only saving souls had any utility in the grand scheme. To Ian, my efforts meant nothing because they did not promote human Salvation -- and specifically, Christian salvation. Since my actions were not performed with Christ in my heart, they weren't any more valuable than, say, chewing gum. I imagine they ranked somewhere above masturbation or believing in evolution because they weren't expressly sinful, but we didn't go into that.

So the jury is out on whether doing the right thing for the wrong reasons gets me any closer to being the good person that 60% of me (more or less) wants to be.

In other news, I got a flu shot at my Monday night rescue squad meeting and immediately got the flu, or a mild form of it. Or maybe it was just psychogenic, but the end result was that I felt lousy for the following morning. I skipped my EMT class and vegetated heavily. By late afternoon, I was somewhat better, and decided to make up my absence by going to the evening version of the same class.

I was in the kind of fever-induced dreaminess that makes the Metro a really wonderfully druggy experience. I was listening to thumpy trip-hop and the crowd seemed to slide by me in an orchestrated tide. The lights of the escalators lit the undersides of everyone's faces a grotesque sodium pale. The train came in on a great techscented blast of air. I got on and found an empty seat with room to covertly eyeball the other people on board. We accelerated and flew through darkness and decelerated. At the next station, all the waiting human figures on the platform were featureless silhouettes just outside the scratched windows. They spilled into the train and acquired detail when the doors slid open. It was all so fabulous that I regretted arriving at Union Station.

Sometimes I genuinely enjoy being a little sick. It pulls you a little off center, where most good things happen.