Tag Archives: time

Marking time…

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Whomever decided that patience is a virtue should be clubbed about the head and neck like a baby seal. I can only assume that anyone who thought sitting around quietly waiting for something to happent to them, must not have had much worth waiting for coming their direction. Yet, here I sit; anything but patient and without the first thing to do about it other than continue sitting here waiting. That and railing against the virtue of patience, of course. I suppose they can make me wait, but there’s no power in heaven or on earth that can make me like it… or even want to like it. Gratification has been sufficiently deferred and I want it now, damnit.

Yes, if you’re wondering, it feels better now that I’ve said that. I’ll be busy marking time if anyone needs me.

Clock watching…

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Some supervisors live and die by the clock. I’m not one of them. If you get your job done, why should I care if it takes you five hours or eight? Of course if I know it takes you five, I’m going to find something else for you to do, but if you’re quiet about it and don’t draw attention to yourself, what’s it to me if you check in on Facebook or look up the afternoon’s scores on ESPN?

I’ve never understood the people who live to catch someone taking a long lunch or coming in a handful of minutes after their scheduled start time. If the work is getting done, who’s being hurt? Seriously, if you have nothing better to do than run a stopwatch on your colleagues, maybe it’s time to take a look at your own workload and see if you’re doing all you can. More importantly, if you want to continue keeping the official shot clock for the office, remember that it’s very likely someone just might start watching you and waiting for an excuse to follow your example.

Payback is what it is, so don’t be surprised when you get got.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Red letters…

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When I was teaching, I always had a red pen within arms reach. You never know when you’re going to have to decimate a book report or bleed all over an essay test. Once I left that life behind, the red pens mostly went into retirement… but they’re making a come back. My desk at the house is currently covered in red-inked post-it notes… red being the indication that it’s something that either needs to get worked into the blog or the book that I keep threatening to write. Most of them are just daily observations or one-off experiences that seemed noteworthy at the time. It’s not so much that I set out to watch people as it is that the quirks of office geography allow me the opportunity to see more than be seen. Add that to my natural tendency to observe the world around me and it’s almost impossible not to notice things as they happen. Most of these post its will probably never be more than red letters on yellow paper, but every now and then one of them pays off. In case you’re wondering, today isn’t one of those days.

Some people can sit down and write final copy off the top of their heads. I’m not one of those people, unfortunately. Generally my better posts start life as a few notes, then get a first draft, then get obliterated in the second draft, and then get a few additional tweaks before seeing the light of day. Sure, it’s been a four day weekend, and there has been plenty of theoretical time to draft up a bunch of these, but all that time was consumed by my new need to chase down Nazi riflemen through the streets of Berlin. Most of my hobbies tend towards the time consuming and I tend a little towards the obsessive… maybe that new game system wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had, but it sure is fun. Then again, it’s already paid for itself by generating its own post it notes dripping with red ink. Now if I could just find a way to quit sleeping, maybe I’d have the time to get everything written up and posted.

Off the road…

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There are any number of great and good aspects of traveling, not the least of witch is ending up back at the place where all your stuff stays (and where you have sole dominion over the air conditioning and your schedule). Going home is always bittersweet and leaving tends to bring out more melancholy in me that usual. I’ve lived somewhere other than “home” for the better part of the last decade and despite that, I still think of it as exactly that; home. In a different time and place, maybe I’d go back, but every trip reminds me just how much I have changed (no matter all my protestations to the contrary) and how much the mountains haven’t. I may be from them, but I’m not of them any more. At the first opportunity, I went downstate and stayed… and then logged a couple of hundred thousand miles after that. When I left I swore I’d never be nostalgic for the deep quiet of the woods or the long whistle of a coal train rolling through a mining town. On a purely objective level, there’s no reason to think of home as a place I’ll ever live again. On an emotional level, though, well, that’s another thing altogether.

I’m not quite foolish enough to believe that I can go home again. I’ve priced myself out of that market and since a guy’s got to work it’s nothing more than a happy thought. Even if it were possible, I can think of dozens of reasons it wouldn’t be a good idea. Maybe someday when I invent the equivalent of sliced bread or get around to writing my great misanthropic diatribe. When that happens, of course, home would be fighting a strong desire to go somewhere with palm trees and a rum economy. Until then, I suppose it’s enough that I have promises to keep… and miles to go before I sleep.

Keeping up…

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I know I haven’t been doing much of a job at keeping up with this lately, but really the only trauma for the last week or so has been work related stupidity and I’ve been trying to stay away from pondering that during non-duty hours as much as possible. So, yeah, other than that, things are good. It’s a beautiful day, the dogs are being crazy good, I have a pot of chili simmering away in the kitchen, and I have very very little to complain about… At the moment. Of course all of that is subject to change at a moment’s notice.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Not quite right…

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For the last week or so, I’ve had this feeling that something is not quite right and this afternoon I think I finally figured out what it was. Over the last year or so, my average daily email intake was probably upwards of 100 a day… Now that I’ve moved over to a job that deals mainly with issues inside the organization, I’m down to maybe a dozen (that aren’t just cc’d to me for some reason). Today, I had two… that’s right, two emails. I think the strange feeling I’ve been having is my mind trying to figure out what to do with three hours of extra time during the day that use to be occupied by answering email. For some reason I’m sure something will crop up to fill the void.

Fall back…

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I just want to go on the record and say that this “fall back” to standard time thing sucks. We’re a post-industrial society. There is no good reason that I can think of that we need to rejigger our clocks twice a year. I’m up and rolling before the sun in both “saving” and “standard” modes, so my proposal is that the country gets together and just picks one. I don’t care which one it is, personally. Plus, there was some asshat on the radio on Friday saying that we should be falling back an hours and 20 minutes to account for the slowing rotational speed of the earth. What? Give me a goddamned break already.

Fortunately, the issue of how we account for time is in the capable hands of the brains trust we call the United States Congress. May God have mercy on our souls.

WTF…

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Does someone want to tell me how the hell it’s the 30th of September already? I’m serious, goddamnit. Who the hell authorized this? I’m feeling a little bit like somewhere between moving and playing road warrior, I’ve somehow managed to miss most of 2007. I have vague recollections of doing things, but the actual coherent memories are few and far between. That’s probably not a good thing.

I’m no slut…

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Unlike a lot of people who work for a living, I’m freely admit that I’m a whore. It’s very simple, really: I trade my time for someone else’s money. I’ll do anything, anytime, anywhere, and although I am easy, I’m not cheap. I absolutely don’t believe in giving my time away for nothing. Not for God. Not for Country. Not for the satisfaction of seeing a job well done. I work for one reason: You pay me. Next time you ask me to do a job in an afternoon that would usually takes a couple of people a couple of days, let’s keep in mind that the clock is running. I’m lucky to enjoy the work and I’ll give you as much time as you want. Just remember that it’s going to cost you.