A Watched Clock Never Boils…Or Something

At least if you’re Salvador Dali anyway. He had all those melting clocks and that entire dream sequence in Hitchcock’s "Spellbound". Yet another example of drug-infused art. But that was last post.

I really enjoy my job. Quite a bit. I get to be creative, have a leadership role, and push boundaries of thought and design in an arena that most people would say "Quit your lying, you lousy liar" if they knew what kind of projects I worked on. Pushing boundaries and being creative are not largely regarded as being synonymous with financial mega-corporations.

But this week, I’ve wished I had a hit or two of whatever Dali was taking (wait…he regularly dropped acid, so scratch that) to help get me through to the end of Friday, when I can head over to my friends’ house and play a Hallochristmagiving-themed game of Mage Knight Dungeons and look forward to Trick-or-Treat with the kids on Saturday.

Before anyone starts strapping in to read me whine and complain about my lousy boss or crummy long hours or how my projects are too demanding, let me stop you right there. It’s none of those things. I love my manager. She’s great. We get along famously. I enjoy my projects. I find them mentally stimulating and I enjoy challenging people’s preconceptions. And I don’t have crummy long hours either. I’m currently a contractor, and if I go over 40 hours I get paid overtime. Ergo, nobody ever wants me to go over 40 hours in a week.

My problem is that this week, I’ve had squat to do. And I’m massively, extremely, painfully bored.

My projects are currently in a temporary state of limbo. My manager, along with most of the rest of our department, has been tied up all week getting a site released polished off. And what work I have had to do, well, I finish up faster than the average bear. And sitting around for the better part of four days makes me antsy. There’s only so much I’m interested in having corporate IT track me reading online during work hours, and the book I’m reading isn’t holding my attention as well as others have. I’m currently working through a book on CSS styling for web sites, and while I am finding it informative, it’s one of the duller technical tomes I’ve read this year.

Yeah, now you’re getting the image. Loves a good zombie flick and reads technical books in his spare time at work. It’s a wonder some intellectual beauty like Diane Keaton in her early 30’s hasn’t snapped me up already. But hey, at least I’m not an accountant.

What I have a hard time understanding is all the people who seem so comfortable with not having anything to do at their job. Wally in the Dilbert comic is their lord and master, except he’s to lazy to lead them and they’d be to lazy to follow even if he did. How can people be so at ease with their sloth? Don’t they worry that, perhaps, someone might find them to be expendable at some point? Don’t they have any ambition? Any drive? Any kind of autonomic nervous system?

And then there are the people who don’t actually have anything to work on, but somehow manage to maintain the illusion of being busy all the time. That’s the one I really don’t get. How is that possible? The one answer I’ve been able to come up with is claiming to have meetings at the other offices downtown all day, then stopping instead at the movie theater for the afternoon.

So what I’ve had to come to grips with is that sometimes the money I’m paid isn’t about having me being constantly productive. Sometimes, just sometimes, it’s going to be about having me around and available to be productive when things are ready for me. But it would still be nice to have something meaningful and interesting to fill the time with.