There’s a lot going on at my office. We’ve got yet another “all hands on deck” event coming down the pipe. We’re blowing money right and left to bring together a “global team” to fight what is, essentially, a U.S. civil liberties battle. At today’s staff meeting a friend and I determined that everything that Management says can be summed up by the following three statements:

1. This is very, very important and we must all work together toward a common goal that is sort of vaguely defined right now.
2. I’m very clever.
3. Everything I’ve said is going to involve a lot of work. I will not be doing any of that work. Here is who will.

Cynical? Perhaps. Accurate? Most definitely. A good way to run an organization? I think not.
[Read more…] about It all boils down to this

I’ve been thinking a lot, not that I don’t do that anyway, but more than usual these days. It happens around this time of year, with summer ending and me longing for the simpler days when this time of year meant shopping for school supplies and new shoes and pants that didn’t have holes in the knees from a summer spent grubbing around in the dirt. It also happens this time of year because my birthday is…well…just about now and birthdays are the perfect time to assess your life.

Mostly I’ve been thinking how out of control my life is, and it isn’t out of control in that movie-of-the-week/after school special sort of cool way, you know, all dangerous with the leather jacket and the attitude. Granted, the idea that we can control our lives at all is somewhat laughable. For those of us who weren’t born rich, life means a series of obligations (pay the student loans, pay off the car, make the rent, send the check to the gas company) that require us to trade the bulk of our time every day for money. It’s out of control in that, at my age, which while I’m not “young” any more I’m not middle aged perse (god, I hope I live to be more than double how hold I am now), I should have a pretty good handle on how I spend my time. Friends, leisure activities, family, and that pesky thing we call work, and work is the vexing problem.

So, after five years of working diligently to build my skills in a second career I find myself working at a non-profit organization that, to the outside world, seems to be doing a lot of good. On the inside, below the surface, the place is a festering morass of disillusionment, bad decisions, and wasted money. I find myself working in a job that I’m not allowed to do properly because expectations are too high, resources are too low, and prioritizing is seen as negativity, and all for about $25,000 less per year than the job described by my official job description, which is far less than what I am actually required to do, is actually worth on the open market.

I find myself wanting to fix this organization’s problems because the solutions are so simple, and yet, no one in a (theoretical) position of responsibility seems to see them. So, I find myself obsessing about work, turning it over in my mind like a big knotted ball of string, trying to figure out which threads I need to pull or untangle to straighten everything out. I think about work pretty much all the time. This is why I’m in such a scary place right now.

See, I’m starting a six-week sabbatical today. Yes, I can hear the violins coming out of the cases “six weeks off with pay, what the hell is there to whine about in that?!?!?!???” The reality is that six-weeks in a mental hospital is probably what I need as I find myself sitting here thinking, “OK, I’ve got all this time, what do I do now? I’m not at work, what do I do? WHAT DO I DO NOW?”

Weekends at my house are normally filled with chores: mow the lawn, vacuum the house, take out the trash, clean the bathroom, go to the grocery store, help my mother with her ongoing home renovation. And many of those things could be easily accomplished by throwing money at them (hire a lawn service, hire a cleaning lady) except for that not being born rich thing.

Weekends are easy…do the chores while my brain churns about work. Be diverted briefly by a movie while my brain tries not to waste the $9 ticket price and churn about work (though inevitably some part of it does), try to sleep while my brain churns about work, and then, suddenly, it’s Monday morning and it’s time to get up and go to work again where I can pick off the small, valiant scab that has formed over the festering infection that is my job.

So, at nearly 34 years old I have no idea what to do with my time once my job is removed from the equation. When did I forget how to play? To just try something new because it seemed like fun? Hell, when I did I forget what fun means to me? And can I ever relearn those things or is it just too late?

I hate my job

Scream and repeat for the next fifteen days…

Well, it is official. The layoffs have come. We are “restructuring” at my office. Twenty percent cuts across the organization, and in my department that means we lost four positions.

My in-transition/former boss, whose position was cut but who is staying on to be the “change manager,” insists that we look at this as a positive change; as an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

It’s hard to see opportunities when you have enough work for five full time people in your department, only two people to do that work, and management above you expects it all to get done.

It’s hard to see opportunities when two of your friends have been “downsized” and at least one of them is definitely out of a job.

It’s hard to see the opportunities when, in a time of horrible morale, you’re told that because you’ve been doing your job based on your supervisor’s guidance you’re now seen as “difficult.”

It’s hard to give a damn when you work over 100 hours in a pay period for which you will be paid for 80 hours and then get grief for wanting to take some of that extra time you worked as days off.

It’s hard to see the point when you go to sleep crying and wake up angry.

And, lastly, it’s hard to see the opportunities when the only way to maintain what shreds of sanity you have left is to completely stop caring about the quality of the work you do.

It sounds like it’s about that time.

When do you know you’re an adult? Is it when you move out of your parents’ house? When you start being responsible for paying your own bills? The first time you buy a beer? Have sex? Admit you were wrong? Or is it as comedienne Elaine Boosler once said “You know you’re an adult when something falls in the toilet and you have to get it out.” ?

I don’t think it’s any of these. I think you finally become an adult when you do something unpleasant, something that you’ve said you will do, that involves balancing your responsibilities against the feelings of another person with the realization that sometimes responsibilities have to win out.

After nearly 7 years of home-ownership, more than 12 years of paying my own bills, and 14 years of being able to buy my own beer, I’m finally about to become an adult.