Emersed in the New Mire

With each passing day in the new job, I get a sense of my mortality. The large company workplace is a mindless place in some ways. There's certainly anonymity as you slog away on things that will likely never go anywhere. Nifty new product ideas, researching capabilities that will be forgotten mostly, though occasionally hauled out when someone says "Hey - we did that years ago" in resonse to elements of an early idea that finally show up in a product somewhere.

I've got the desk and the co-worker thing going on, but it's a pretty miserable existance. There seems to be deadwood about and a sense of some foreboding. Layoffs are expected somewhere, and frankly I wouldn't be upset if it caught me too. I've had a few nice paychecks and would get a little severance package, and I could go back to hunting for other opportunities. Perhaps I'll do that anyway.

The toughest part of the thing is that working full time takes so much of your time. Reminds me of the industrial revolution period when people just basically worked and slept. There was a bit of time in there where some miserable food was stuffed into yur engine to keep it working, but work, sleep and die was the norm. Sure I get to come home now and then, and there are weekends now, but a 25 hour week would be a much better idea.

If I can ever get a firm of somekind going, I think I'll shoot for the 25 hour work week. Come in at 11:00, work for an hour, have a bite, do some more work till 5 and then head home. A real opportunity for a work/play balance.

Oh well - such is monday. Ah for an inspiring project without sad, dysfunctional folk around me.

The Criteria By which you Judge

I think the value of any job needs to be judged by a different set of criteria that you are probably using right now. People tend to think about money and type-of-work, and co-workers. I think if you truly look at your life as a whole, there are other things that make a big difference. Having lived with minimal income for a while, I recognize that money isn't such a big issue. My lifestyle was virtually unchanged. Sure I used lots of savings for getting by, but the quality of life was good (with the intellectual freedom etc) that it was a good trade off.

In fact, I would raise a few less considered elements much higher than before. Drive time - time wasted sitting in your car - has got to rank highly. Plus the social environment at work. I eat lunch alone and read mostly because the classic geek in his natural environment can't get away from his monitor during lunch, and so few venture to the caffeteria.

I've been listening to Librivox.org audio on my MP3 player on the way it. It's a bit fiddly to cue up the right chapter, but Aldous Huxely's Crome Yello is quite good, and the amateur reader does a good job, although with a bit of hiss on the recording.

Now, salary is important as a score-card. I mean I wouldn't want to earn a measly amount as it would indicate some diminished level of satisfaction with having my contribution to the company. But I would happily work in a 20% lower salary range if I could drive only 10min to work. I'd give up another 10% if there were chatty happy people to have lunch with. Hell, I'd give up another 20% to get away from the noisy, hacking, snorting cubicle loser who seems to have reached adulthood without any basic hygiene or etiquette from parents.

I'll give up fifty bucks a year if I could get a decent chair, and another fifty for a decent cup of tea. A busty co-worker who keeps dropping her pencil? Nah, I should say that would be too distracting - take that off the list.

A caffeteria with a bit more choice - maybe some Chinese food or a do-it-yourself sandwhich bar with real bread. Yeah. Oh, and why is everything $6.95. They should subsidize that sucker and sell me a sandwich for $3 tops. Sure I can get a small salad, soup and a roll for $4.50, but it's a bit tired after a few days of the same thing.

What also sucks is not feeling like you're contributing. I don't know enough people, or the subject matter deep enough to be autonomous from my leader yet. I could really use that.

Anyway, give it a couple of years and see what happens. I'm a bit worried that the big company thing will keep me mired in meetings, reports and circular travel without any real opportunity for a strong outcome.

So to sum up - I'd put my job satisfaction at the end of an equation comprised of drive-time, people make-up, desk/office location, authority, salary, caffeteria quality. Yeah, that sounds good.

What's your criteria?

It's Over in a Blink

Twenty Oh Six is history and off we go on another one. I've tried to think up analogies for the passage of time, but never really came up with anything super useful. I look for elements of steady movement, with huge inertia. A seemingly slow, tortoise like pace but one which actually accomplishes huge expanses of coverage if you don't pay attention for a little while.

It's a bit like rock-climbing, in that last element. You concentrate and work out your moves and then look down at some point, thinking you're just getting away from the ground, only to find that you're already well up the cliff.

The Train

But one of the more apropos analogies was the idea of a low, long train of flat-cars that is meandering across a track-less desert. We can sit on the car, legs dangling and do nothing. That's not too bad sometimes. Othertimes, we walk alongside and pick up stuff, like rocks and wood and little things lying hither and yon and put them on our flatbed car. It moves very slowly, so you can stroll with the slowest pace, and keep up with it.

So, got that image in your head? So imagine, that you're sitting on your designated car, and you've got an assortment of interesting stones and twigs. You get off and sit on the desert sand for a while, and chat with friends, then wander over and an easily get back on to your car, and it toodles along a bit more. Occasionally you dawdle for a while, and when you get back to the train, you walk briskly, or maybe even jog a bit to get back to your familiar car.

Some might doze off in a pleasantly warm desert evening, and wake to find that their car, even though it moves ever so slowly, has disappeared into the distance. Jogging for a while, you still don't recognize your car, and so you get back on, squeezing between some strangers you don't know. They grumble a bit, but you're back on, a little dishevelled, and uncomfortable.

Maybe you get off occasionally and jog a bit along the train, still hoping to find your spot. How far could it really have gone? But each time you get back on when you're tired of the search, and your feet are aching. Some people are helpful - "Hey jump on fella. Take a rest, you'll find your spot soon." Others are dismissive and territorial. "You're in my spot. Move over there, this is my car. I've got stuff I want to put there!"

When you find your spot, you're releived and sit enjoying the familiar environs, your rocks and sticks. That old iguana skull. The girl from the next car over waves and says "How've you been?"

Waterworld, Tower Builders and Road Trips

It's an analogy that has some merit. I think I'll explore it some more in another forum. Other analogies have elements I like. Walking on a planet of shallow water, perhaps. There are spots that are deeper than others, but the water is a bit muddy sometimes and you don't see the deep spots unless someone else has hit one, pointed one out, or you use sufficient caution.

Or perhaps building a tower of stone, with spiralling steps up the side. Occasionally a scarcity of stone sets you back. Occasionally you've got a structure that won't be stable much longer and you have to backtrack, and rebuild some elements. Sometimes, the stones are hard to find, or someone is pilfering stones from your structure.

A favourite literary/cinematic device is the road trip - driving a car a long distance. Stopping in roadside towns and truckstops, picking up hitch-hikers, navigating confusing routes, or dealing with ornery weather. It's got the break-downs, gas shortages and annoying driving partners. The need for rest, or trading off the driving. It's a good vehicle, to pun my way through this, but sometimes over used, or applied poorly.

Back to Real Life

The danger with analogies is that they can break down sometimes, or get applied too broadly. The train keeps going, regardless of our ability to stay on it, so on with my update.

Christmas (a secular holiday about trees and presents) is completed, as is the new years eve celebratory event. Tomorrow it's back to my P2 role, without having appreciably acheived anything on the grand list of ongoing projects. Lots of time for reflection, finished a few books, cooked and ate some good food, found some other interesting food elsewhere.

Oh, hey, those are in fact various projects on the list. P4, P5, P6, P8, P9 all got some good attention. Even a touch of P11 as I yesterday explored the "Faces of War" element of the Archives website. It is a great array of pictures from the 40's. None of my relevant research people, but still interesting on its own.

Wrap
Well, so goes it. I am thinking I'll do a bit of P10, P12 with the stuff I outlined above. Your assignment for this moment is to stop and think up another analogy for life that is particularly interesting to you. Send me a note if you come up with something good!