I think it’s hysterically funny that at annual appraisal time every year, I expect to get yelled at for something. My stomach does flip-flops and my mind races to devise reasonable excuses for anything bad I might have done as I anticipate the hour of my dreaded appraisal! I practice my lines: “It wasn’t my fault!” “The dog ate my homework!” “But, officer, I was only going one way!”.
I don’t know why I get so nervous because Bossman never yells at me. He may do many things: he makes bad policy, enforces it (then re-enforces it), and rewards people that don’t deserve it, but he never takes you in his office to reprimand you (he finds passive aggressive ways to do it instead). I never get thumped for anything. I come in late, I waste time on the computer, I take long lunches, and I take too much time off—but as far as he’s concerned, everything’s fine and I’m doing a great job. Well done, sign on the bottom line please.
Sounds like heaven, right? That’s what everybody thinks, and for most people it would be.
Think about it: it doesn’t matter whether you do a good job or a bad job. Show up, breathe, do as your told, and you get paid. Any normal person would think this is a great gig. So what if you have to suck up your pride? So what if you have to watch everything you’ve worked for get tossed under the bus? So what if complete ninnies take over the place or get promoted over you? You get your paycheck, you’ve got bennies, what’s your problem?
I’ve said for a long time that, presuming it’s true that we create our own experiences, then we also create our own despair. The grief over my breakup with HWSNBN, for instance, was largely driven by the fact that I cared about him so much. If I could just stop caring, I thought, it would stop hurting. To quote a better individual than myself, the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
I feel very much the same about my job. I care about what I do very much. I truly believe that my contribution to the visual style and communication of Initech determines the ultimate success of the organization. I am responsible. I do a bad job and it reflects badly on them. I do a good job, and it effects the greater good, so to speak. Most of the people I work with do not think this way at all. They think that all they do is “pretty things up” and that’s just fine. They are simply happy to be employed, unfazed by the massive ignorance they’re surrounded by. Mind you, they’re not terribly talented nor particularly driven individuals—none of them would ever survive a high-pressure ad agency situation (if I owned my own agency, I don’t think I’d hire any of them)—they have other priorities. They have families, hobbies, other things that distract them from worrying about whether or not their jobs are fulfilling. In other words, they don’t care. Things fall down around them at their jobs, and they go home at the end of the day absolutely unfettered.
There is great freedom in not giving a shit.
Problem is, I’m the kind of person that needs challenge. I was one of those kids in school who asked for more homework or who wrote a 12-page essay when the teacher asked for three. I’m an overachiever, and in the absence of obstacles, I make them.
This would certainly explain my problems in relationships or in any other aspect of my life. I never seem happy just sailing along waiting for life to toss me a problem. I make them for myself. Then when life does eventually toss me a toughie, I’m too busy to handle it.
I always say that one of these days, I’ll get all caught up with my problems—I’ll pay the bills, get the house clean, get everything fixed, and then I can relax.
Yeah, right before I start making problems for myself again!
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Perhaps it says a lot about me that I’m a fan of the lowly dandelion.
I get into this sad, self indulgent place at least once every few weeks (or is it every few days?) and can do nothing but wait it out. Thank you all for the support and kind words when it gets dark for me—it’s really means a lot and helps me get through this.
I have mentioned in a recent previous article that I have one of the most envied yards in my neighborhood, enough so, that before I put up the fence around it, people often adopted it as their own. In the back of my property, I have a small grove of the most massive, gorgeous ancient lilac trees you’ve ever seen in your life. Easily 100 years old, these lilacs burst forth every spring with a plethora of blooms, some of which are as long as my forearm. It’s an amazing sight to behold.
Ya gotta love the whole “being fat again” thing. Ultimately losing the battle and reemerging into the social scene as an obese pariah is simply unbearable.
Once again, as blatant blog filler, I present my search engine top ten list.
The other night, Jay Leno joked that we, in this country, simultaneously have an obesity crisis and a food shortage. “Shouldn’t those two cancel each other out?” he joked.
If my last two posts seemed at all preachy, I apologize. As I’m starting to get back my backbone (Getting Back Your Backbone™), I’m also getting a little cheeky with myself. I do tend to do that.
