What the hell is this thing? The House of Wug New floor. Hold the friction. Fortunately
Re: Work ethic - It happened to me too! The turning point was when our salesperson gave his written resignation. I have suddenly worked hard and made major improvements in the office that I was only putting off because I felt that the saleperson would play the spoiler.
I was just reading Jenny's Procrastination Page , where she was commenting that try as she might to self google as it were, Jenny's Procrastination Page was just not coming up. Now it wasn't as if she was looking for someone who likes to make words up, or anotherblog with a current guitar obsession. My comment would be to pick some choice phrase such as "Jenny's Procrastination Page" and use it as the title of the blog in question and then get as many other bloggers to link to that page using the same phrase. This way, Jenny's Procrastination Page will no longer be lost in cyberspace, and all that anyone would have to do is type the words Jenny's Procrastination Page into their favourite search engine and they would find the perfect page to procrstinate with.
Oh my god. That page is so...so pink!
So, getting back to your work ethic - what exactly was it that chaned about your attitude that made you go from being Mr Reticent to Mr Active?
Well, both of those to start with. But essentially, looking ahead to the battles, I couldn't see a window of opportunity to win any of the likely battles. In the past, if things went well, he would get the credit, if things went badly, I would get the blame. If there was anything I was doing that could make me look good - he would either be the spoiler or try to take the credit.
Oh, and to answer the first question, I suddenly had a vision for a way out. Amazingly, everything is happening as I'd originally predicted (In a vague general sense of course). The sudden Eureka idea I can only put down to a subconscious awakening or impending 13th Anniversary.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
It turns out I have a work ethic after all.
Since I started work in earnest on Project Porkpie a couple of weeks ago, I’ve probably done more work than I did in the last few months. And I did more work in those last few months than I’d probably done in the previous year. It’s taken a long time to find it, but it actually looks as if I have a job to do that’s well suited to my mayfly-like attention span and my innate affinity for absorbing bureaucratic processes in order to circumvent them. Project management means having a million things to do in no particular order, except inasmuch as they all needed to be done yesterday.
What surprises – no, astounds- me is that by and large I am very keen to do these many things, provided I can flit in, pin each individual thing down for a few minutes of my devoted attention and then happily send it on its way. This way, you see, I can’t become bored by the task at hand or daunted by the enormity of the whole task. Occasionally, it will obviously be necessary to step back and look at the big picture, and I can see it being a bit of a trial to manage those days, but the transience of focus needed to keep everything ticking along is something I’m really enjoying. What’s more, it’s allowing me to be productive and feel good about it.
God help me, I actually took stuff home to read over the last couple of weekends. I’ve never done that seriously before, except when I’ve been prepping for a promotion interview. And it’s necessary to point out that I didn’t actually read it until about midnight on Sunday, so I’m clearly not all the way there yet. But it’s a start. At least I can do this and be happy about it.
Everyone in the house spent last week exhibiting various stages of cold infections, ranging from my week-long ultra-mild headache through Simon’s sniffles and Jimbo’s puffy eyes to Fiona’s full-blown respiratory tar-and-feathering. If we declined to participate in your social event or gathering, it’s because we weren’t really able to follow human conversation without suffering dizzy spells. (And yet, I still managed to get to work – since I was pretty sure I was through any possible infectious stage – and got a hell of a lot done. Witness my transformation! At any other time in my career, I’d probably have taken a chance at semi-legitimate sick leave and run all the way to the video shop with it. Not so with the new motivated me! But I digress). It did kind of make for a long, tiring week though.
Friday night we got Brenda and Soozie to come over and supervise (or rather, do) the tiling in front of the fireplace. While they supervised (did) that, Fi and I finished up the painting on the various doors, architraves and bits of skirting that needed to be more purple in the dining room and kitchen. This is the final patch of preparation required before we lay the floating floor, which itself is the last thing that needs doing in those rooms. We started them – what, back in October? – so it feels sort of weird to finally be getting close to having done everything there. After that, it will be back to finish the upstairs hall – work on that was suspended after we moved in and needed to clear the decks for the kitchen – and then on downstairs and into the study. Brenda and Soozie did a great job (well, Brenda supervised, as she was still nursing the calf muscle she tore at indoor sports the previous week) and it looks, well, great. It’ll look really great when the floor around it is finished.
We were too grumpy, sick and achey – in a word, wug – to attempt to do anything constructive on Saturday morning – especially after we watched the instructional video on laying the floating floor which (a) had a cover that made it look like soft porn and (b) made the job look too bloody daunting for us to cope with. Instead we bludged and moaned. That made us feel a little better, but not really.
Sunday, fired up that we hadn’t achieved anything yet, we corralled Jimbo and got stuck into laying the flooring. It took many hours to lay out the first third of the dining room floor, and the less said about the process, the better. We started to get better at it eventually. We also bought a new jigsaw, which has become My Personal Toy (just as Fi gets the Huge Bandsaw of Dismemberment, so I get the Cutter of Jagged “Lines”.
We had some much fun on Sunday that we did another couple of hours’ on it after work yesterday, and we’re going to keep at it tonight as well. We’re nearly up to the kitchen, where things are going to get really complicated.
We had new Lost and Doctor Who to sustain us when the working day was done. I love TV.
6 Comments:
I think's Jenny's blog gave me pinkeye.
Did you feel enervated by the salesperson's negative attitude, or the fact that you knew any change was going to be a battle that you couldn't face up to fighting?
