Nothing I hate more than having so much work that I don’t have time to think. Pretty much it’s been a thought-less week so far.
I did, however, manage to stay out far too late after our softball team scored a perfect season record — not one win. The upside is we had the best (i.e. only) barbecue running before the came. Carne asada hot off the grill and a cold beer is a pretty good trade off to losing.
(The best thing about this picture is the complete absence of anyone one on the field near me. Apparently, no one feared my Jacoby Ellsbury-like “need for speed.”
After getting pulled over going 45 in a 25-30 zone, and happily avoiding a ticket, I have wimped out on the post-game draining of beer cans. However, with that scare in my head as I cruise through suburbia to the highway home, I feel illicit and dangerous. This rebel sense is heightened knowing that M. is waiting up for me at home.
It’s a very retro feel to glide back home and know a groggy person will be wondering where you’ve been. Pat was quite a bit more suspicious and judgmental on those late nights, and some of those nights went mighty late and she should have been suspicious. On the other hand, M. has a phone, and cellular technology was barely invented or in use in my youth. Right around midnight he called to ascertain that I was just winding my way through the winding roads that lead to home and told me he was headed to bed.
In completely unrelated news, I got to experience a little social alchemy at the workplace today. I had to take some newfangled, online assessment doohicky about my labor style. ‘Cuz who don’t want to labor in style? I’d say which tool and all, but, you know, I like that workplace firewall between the sane, sitting on the couch me and the check-earning, good, little worker bee or ant. No reason to let the man know I was talking up his toil-measuring tools.
The noteworthy part, though, is really about me. Pretty much the evaluation in some mysterious psycho-social way nailed some stuff based only on my picking the word pairs I liked. Click, click, click, you’re creative and shit like that there. For a minute, you believe in magic and have faith in the salt mines and the man.
M. kind of sank that mystical, magical feeling. His thoughts, with which I tend to agree, is work-style evaluations pretty much work, because none of us are really special unique snowflakes. We’re probably more like daisies in a field. With a bent petal or left-facing leaf or chubby stem, we’re different from the next daisy over in the pasture. Sure. But, in the final analysis a daisy is nonetheless just like all of the other white-petaled, yellow-middled throngs.
So, as we plod through the workaday world, assuming there’s some faith in actually get some minimal shit done, how many different ways can you really play it?
I’m the freak with the messy desk but preternatural organizational skills for other people. Someone else is the diligent and smart and careful colleague who keeps the ship afloat calmly and thoughtfully. Theme and variation. Same shit, different way to wank.
We’re meant to discuss it all at our offsite (the one for which I have the grave misfortune to be making all of the arrangements and rocking the planning) in some kind of uplifting group dynamics session.
The Buddhist lesson hidden in that little joyous exercise, i.e. “Buddha is a shit stick,” will come to its full joy when I get to listen to the folks literally in their first jobs (or first tough, “real” jobs) wax on about their work styles. But, that’s not the kicker, the moment of transcendence. Nope, that will come when simultaneous to listening, I’ll have to be sure lunch is ready and set up, the water glasses are full and any number of shitty little details that are the essence of meeting planning are handled.
I’m surprised my self-assessment didn’t throw me a line in tortured fortune-cookie philosophy. “You were born to serve others.” Maybe with some tips thrown in for better managing my suicide attempt, either life or career-wise.
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