Sunday

As another Sunday winds down and another work week looms in my immediate future, I try to focus and figure out what my strategy will be for maintaining emotional balance next week.

I spent a splendid weekend in the south visiting my kin-folk. As I filed out of the airport toward the husband awaiting me in the car, I notice the people working on a Sunday night in the airport. These jobs entail picking up garbage off the plane, picking up garbage off the floor of the airport, or even worse, working at a shop in the airport, where one must spend lonely hours sitting in an empty store for practically no monetary return, and surely no benefits.

It immediately makes me feel grateful for my job and my paycheck when I see workers like this. I could never live my life on their pay, and I would probably not even be able to do it, since it requires punching a time-clock, something I have never been able to master. They do encourage me greatly to go in and get the damned job done. No whining. No stressing.

The Good News is...

I may be unreliable, stressed-out, unfocused, slow, lazy, a loner and disappointing, but I am NOT depressed.

Writer's Block

Ever heard of writer's block? Well sometimes I get worker's block. There are numerous techniques I've developed over the years to help dissipate it. Walk around and talk to co-workers, get coffee, surf the internet, go sit in my car, go sit in the ladies room, and type emails to friends are some of my tactics. Today I tried them all and by 4:30pm I was getting nowhere. Like literally nowhere, sitting there staring, click open outlook, close outlook, open outlook, close outlook. So I left (the last resort technique) and came home. God I hope tomorrow is better. Huge tasks are piling up, and they ain't gonna get done by themselves...that's for goddamn sure.

And it's only Tuesday

At the beginning of the day I felt like a double-dutch rejectee trying to get back in the game.

By the end of the day I was like a cricket with one leg tore off trying to escape the cats.

The Great Gatsby

Read it. It's short. The writing style is unique. Certainly different than what I am used to, but I could follow it. And the poor neighbor at the end has to witness the friendless funeral. This ending reminded me a bit of A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe. It's a manly concern, a legacy thing I suppose. It does not strike me as all that tragic, a little sad maybe.

It's the physiological symptoms that tell me I've had enough

When at work I am overwhelmed at the number of details I am required to look after. There are so many I could not even list them here.  I check contract drawings against factory drawings, factory drawings against other factory drawings to make sure mating equipment, can, er, mate.  Endless checking is required to make sure every item on an order is correct, and an order may have hundreds of items. IT SUCKS!

Adding to the insurmountable mountain of details is a computer system that requires its own pampering .  One must check the computer to make sure everything matches up, then check the computer again, since sometimes the computer automatically changes things for reasons that can only be explained by someone in IT, but in no way make sense to a human trying to get work done. These are called ‘glitches’. THESE WILL HAUNT YOU FOREVER!

I used to think it was just my particular industry, but after working Saturday’s at the vets I’m convinced it’s everywhere. Recently I was confronted about a pricing error in the computer system that had been passed on to a customer. I was charged with being negligent because I should have caught the computer error. I can think of a list of reasons why this wasn’t particularly my fault, but whatever, when you are confronted it’s all over. ASSIGNING BLAME IS SOMETHING PEOPLE DO WHO CANNOT ACCEPT THAT SHIT HAPPENS!

Detailed paper documentation -> detailed computer files -> ever vigilant for computer glitches -> repeat.

Note to self: next job, make sure it does not require the cycle above. It is impossible and will make you crazy!

Sunday

After a mostly pleasant weekend myself re-emerges. So I was not lost forever! The successful formula was dinner out with the husband, a trip to the used bookstore, laundry folded and put away, litter pans emptied, plants watered, a lot of sleep.

Godspeed J. Work had next week and earn a bunch of money.

Wednesday Work opens up the heart to Despair

A work overload creates an atmosphere of controlled panic where speed and efficiency flow from my fingertips onto the keyboard and bounce off my tongue into the phone. My mind ceaselessly pushes, "work faster, get more done, this absolutely MUST get this done by 11, then this must get done...". Every breath reminds me of the pressure in the center of my chest, dull pain emanates outward and back toward the spine, up to the shoulders and down to the stomach. Even my elbows hurt. I frantically check my bank account, retirement account, calculating best case scenarios. I consider bargaining for more vacation time.

My character is drained of humor and common courtesies during the day. In the evening it leaves a shell of a being unable to enjoy gardening, reading, eating, walking the dogs or even television shows. I breathe in, and out, deep, and slow,
remembering
to let
my stomach rise, and fall
with my lungs.

On more manageable days I feel I am on the cusp of discovering something about myself, something crucial, important, altering. If I just had a little bit more time to think things through. Then I am robbed of the time, I must perform, and I don't like it. My house of cards blown over, just as I was setting the top-most one.

Was I ever onto anything? Am I a fool? Why not embrace the work-load? A million chances at self-discovery, none of them pursued to success. To change the story of my life.

It shows what happens when you ask too much of a limited resource: it disappears.

             From Why the Colorado River Stopped Flowing, as heard by me on All Things Considered on NPR.

Wow. I'm really trying to keep up appearances. Work is killing me. One co-worker left in March, then the other left mid-June. I'm all that is left of my job description. It is my understanding that the lapse in hiring replacements is a money saving measure, standard procedure. A replacement has been hired and starts August 3rd. So I only need to survive two more weeks.

If only it were only the two weeks. I work managing projects, and lately we have started many new projects. As any project manager can tell you, the early work is the most important. I have, I don't know, about 10 projects that will last a year or two that are all getting off to a very bad start. The repercussions will probably reverberate for years, long beyond the life-span of this next new chick starting August 3rd. Yahoo, I'm sure I'll still be around, mopping up the mess.

Little Bee

Finished reading Little Bee. It was good, did it in a week. The story was good, made you think. But what I liked best was the way Little Bee told her story, as a foreigner, in a Nigerian accent.

For Real

Part of the engine of the global economy is the unreasonable demands that can be placed on people you don't know. For there's always someone else you don't know who will do it cheaper.

Bless all the Bad Kids the Good People send their kids to Private School to Avoid ever having to Meet.

I was going to post about my hard-working ass, but as I sit outside on the deck, I notice the neighbor kid out on her roof.

It makes me optimistic about the future.

Of the three homes I can see stretching across the end of the yard, I've seen kids on all. In a neighborhood of tiny yards, too many people and not enough privacy the kids figured this one out. On their roofs they talk and play and observe without interruption.

I know the schools around here are not great, their parents probably work all hours, their teachers probably think they are all delinquents. And a portion of them most likely are.

But a few will break out, and go somewhere, and see a different world where they'll learn and grow and acquire sophisticated tastes. Survival multiplies in their gut. And someday, when they're making some money and can go visit a posh restaurant any time they want, they'll remember....a little patch of roof, hovering above an itty bitty yard, beneath the airport's approach path, on a humid summer's night ....