Tag Archives: Life

It’s a new year…

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It’s a new year, or at least it’s a new year in the archives. This morning the calendar rolled forward to 2008 and I’m happy to deliver up for you the first five posts from January. If I’m remembering the year right, it was one of those perfect storms of family obligations, trying to slog through to the end of grad school, slowly starting to realize that I wasn’t as in love with work as I thought I was, and the usual malcontentery that you find here on a regular basis. Not all of those themes come through in this first set of posts, but that should give you the flavor of what was banging around in my head when they first appeared on ye olde MySpace blog.

Each of today’s archive posts first appeared over five years ago now. It’s remarkable how some things change and some feel like they’re in exactly the same place they were 2000 days ago. Life’s funny like that.

Without any further suspense, go ahead and check out the archive for January 2008.

What I Did on My Furlough Day (Part 3 of 11)

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Someone furloughed shouldn’t be working as hard as I am. I got up at 6:30 this morning (Hush, that is sleeping in for people who normally wake up around 5:00), drank a pot of coffee, emailed my usual anti-furlough rant to the members of the Maryland Congressional delegation. I thought about calling them out on Facebook and Twitter, but thought better of it since I was on a schedule. I was on a schedule because I had my six month check up with the ol’ sawbones this morning. Ironically, I picked this doctor at least in part because his practice is not far from the office so it would be easy to slip out and back for appointments. Being Furlough Friday, of course, I believe I have discovered a flaw in what was an otherwise logical arrangement. And, please, don’t get me started on their rescheduling the appointment from yesterday to today with about 18 hours notice.

I could turn this into a long story, but I won’t. As usual the doc is annoyed that my blood pressure is good, blood sugar is well within tolerance, and the acid reflux has been gone now for well over a year without meds. They pulled blood in the hopes of finding something wrong, but I have no reason to expect it will come back as anything but “normal” as it always has in the past. So it was a typical visit – lose weight, less meat, nothing over 10g of sugar.

OK, look, doc. At some point we’re going to have to have a serious discussion about not just health, but also quality of life. Maybe if I eat nothing but tofu, almond milk, and salad with no dressing for the rest of my days I’ll live to be 106… but I’m not sure 71 years without steak, pizza, craft beer, or blue cheese dressing is a world I wish to inhabit. Sure, I’d be alive, but I’m not sure I’d really be living.

Woops…

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So in my rush to get through everything on my to do list, I neglected the fact that there are still two more days available in this weekend. Since I’m not the type to just make up things to do, it seems I’ll have more free time than I was estimating. The down side, of course, is that I was expecting a new episode of TrueBlood tonight… But since I’ve got a good book and plenty of ice cold Red Stripe, every little thing is gonna be alright.

Small pleasures…

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One of life’s small pleasures is the feeling you get blowing through the office doors at 4:01 PM on the day leading into an extra-long weekend. It’s a happy moment knowing you’re as far away from your desk as you’re going to get… but being a glass half empty kind of guy, I also have to readily acknowledge that every minute that ticks past after 4:01 is one minute closer to the inevitable let down of being back at my desk when our revels have ended. Happily that’s more a Sunday kind of problem.

To a casual reader I think it must seem like I hate my job. It only seems that way. The work actually tends towards interesting and most of the people fall somewhere along the spectrum of better than average. There are, of course, exceptions but that’s to be expected everywhere as far as I can tell. Like everyone else, the simple fact is there are just other things I’d rather be doing than sitting in a box hammering away at PowerPoint for those eight hours in the middle of the day. For some reason, I don’t think I’d mind working the keys quite so much if I were doing my own writing for those same eight hours. Being a self-published eBook author, though, doesn’t pay the bills. Maybe someday.

This isn’t really a post about work, though. It’s a post about embracing the joy of the time off we do have – about making the most of the time we don’t spend sitting in a box. Whether you’re writing, grilling, boating, swimming, shopping, or just sitting around on your ass not doing a thing, try to enjoy it. The small pleasures are way too few and far between.

185 emails…

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There’s nothing quite as effective as 185 emails in your inbox to drag you back to reality. Three hours later, at least it’s a relief to know that 10% of them were discussing printer and network-related outages, 80% of them were crap you have no actual interest in, 5% were email from friends, and the remaining 5% are issues you actually need to do something about. It’s possible that I might have sat down and cried if there were actually 185 issues that needed my attention this morning. Even though I was physically present today, clearly my brain is still dragging in from somewhere on the Eastern Shore. Unless something ridiculous happens, it should be a day or two yet before the post-vacation afterglow wears off. I’d like to think that it could last until the 4-day Independence Day weekend, but I think we all know that’s more of a pipe dream than a plan.

Aside from the usual complaints about being back in the saddle, the routine is the routine. That’s probably good and bad. It’s comforting because it’s normal, but it still leaves me with a slightly sick feeling that it’s not what I really want to be doing with the day. Reality. 185 emails. Being a responsible adult is a real bitch.

A face in the crowd (and better off for it)…

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The best part of just being a face in the crowd is that you get to spend a lot of time watching people in power, whether that be the legitimate power of elected office or the almost completely fictitious power that resides in a fancy sounding title. The most common denominator that I’ve observed so far is simple – the more powerful the individual being observed, the less control they have over their own lives. The ones with real power, the ones who are minor princes of the universe, seem to have their days scripted, their movements controlled, and have barely a spare minute to do so much as scratch their own arse.

It’s hard to believe, but a younger, more ambitious version of me once thought that sounded like an ideal way to spend a career… long flights, clamoring between meetings, and generally being indispensible. With a third of my career in the rear view, I can honestly say that the shine is well off that idea. These days, the last place I want to find myself is at the center of the hive. The older I get, the less inclined I am to let other people dictate my schedule or to cede control over any portion of my life. My one concession is the 40-hours a week that I spend working for wages… and that’s only grudgingly because I like eating and having a roof over my head.

I’m sure it’s a fine way to live and all, but for me, having the maximum amount of personal control over who I interact with, what I do, and when I do it is pretty damned important. On balance, short of being named absolute monarch of a small tropical island, I’m not sure that’s something I’d want to give up – especially not for something as temporal as a spiffy sounding title and not much else.

Photograph…

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In one part of our building there’s a long hall with several dozen historic pictures that appear to be taken sometime between or shortly following the World Wars. I know they’re supposed to instill a sense of pride and speak to an enduring legacy, but that’s not what struck me about them today. Walking past those pictures this morning it suddenly hit me that they all have one thing in common – Those people staring back at us from the other side of archival quality print are all dead, deceased, gone to meet their maker, and singing with the choir invisible.

I’m sure that every one of them did great and wonderful things or were very important in some way, but I’d be willing to stake real money that not one person in a thousand could tell me who they were or what they did. Maybe that’s morbid, but it’s a pretty stark reminder, just when I needed it, that some future hardworking and dedicated employee isn’t going to have a clue who we were or why our picture is hanging on some wall looking back at them. Sure, everything we’re doing every day seems awfully important, but in 100 years, you’ll be a luck one if someone is even using your picture as an office decoration. I’m not so far gone down the path of fatalism that I’m willing to concede that nothing we do day-to-day really matters, but sometimes it’s healthy to let nameless faces from the past remind us not to take it all so damned seriously. Chalk that up to stupid lessons I wish I’d have learned years ago.

Achieving work-life balance…

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Reaching the end of the year with every hour of “use-or-lose” leave accounted for is something of an obsession around this time of year. After some quick back of the napkin math, it looks like I’ll be opening the new leave year with 232 hours in the bank. Since we can only carry 240 hours from year to year, I’m on the correct side of the allowable amount of carryover time. I’m sure there are plenty of people who “give back” time at the end of the year, but that violates one of the most sacred principles of my professional philosophy – “Gather unto yourself all the benefits to which you are entitled and guard them jealously.”

If my calculations are correct (and I assure you they are), there are 13 work weeks left in 2012. Of those 13 weeks, I’ll work a full five days during only five of them, with three of those weeks being the ones immediately preceding the week and a half I’m taking off at Christmas. Put another way, of the 77 days between now and the start of my Christmas vacation, I’ll only be at the office for 59.7% of them after accounting for weekends, federal holidays, and random days off.

After a few more mathematical gymnastics and allowing for time at the office only being a third of each 24-hour work day it really breaks down to me only being at work for 19.91% of the next three months. Suddenly even the most batshit crazy day doesn’t seem quite so bad. Apparently the secret is looking at time in aggregate and not at individual hours and days. Hopefully someone will remind me about this the next time I’m tempted run away and join the circus.

June 4th…

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At just about this time last year I was standing in a house stacked literally to the ceiling with boxes, furniture, and the general ephemera of life. If I’m remembering correctly the first couple of days of June were some ridiculous combination of a sprint and a marathon. June 1st was a 900 mile drive. June 2nd was my first look at the rental house and signing the lease. On the 3rd I finally took possession of the house while the property manager was still (badly) trying to paint over a particularly hideous colored wall in the basement . On the 4th I checked in at the new job and watched as every shred of personal property I owned was hand carried into the house by a truck driver and his nephew from Arkansas. To say there was a lot going on might be a bit of an understatement. The things you can do when you’re fueled almost exclusively by coffee and adrenalin are simply amazing.

With that little trip down memory lane wrapped up, it begs the larger question – Where did the last year go? It feels like I just sat down for a minute and suddenly it’s June again. I vaguely remember a few cold days in there somewhere that must have been winter, or at least what passed for winter last year. I dimly recall raking leaves at a point that feels fairly recent, so I’m almost sure there was a fall in there somewhere, too. Honestly, though, most of it has been a blur.

Perspective is a funny thing. When I was a kid, the summer seems to stretch out forever into the distance. Now I’m half afraid I’ll wake up one morning and find snow on the ground and Christmas coming on fast. I’d love to slow up a little and take it all in, but I don’t dare take my hand off the throttle. I’m not sure I know who I am if I’m not going in three or four directions at once.

Rules…

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I’m never going to be nominated for sainthood. I’ve made my peace with that. Still, there are some unbreakable, iron clad rules that I live my life by. They’re not negotiable under any circumstances. Not ever. That’s not to say I’m not tempted to break them on an almost daily basis. One thing I’ve noticed though, is the moments when you’re most tempted to break your own rules are generally the moments when they should apply the most. Rules are pesky things like that. It’s almost unfortunate.