I intend to name my memoirs The Life and Times of a Terrible Employee: one man’s rebellion against the better part of existence…volume 1.
Really though, if there was some grand contest for being a wretched coworker I would at least qualify. It’s not that I necessary despise work – individual tasks are more enthralling than others of course – but I enjoy paperwork, I tolerate phone-speak, I actually have an affinity for documentation, budgeting, and planning. If work was as simple as doing work than I would almost be a great employee – it just never quite comes together like that.
In a better world, I would come in day after day, finish my tasks, and go home. Instead, even in jobs I despise, I maintain a sense of ambition toward completion. It is the lack of finality that I despise about work. No definite end, no goal to accomplish, no final chapter. The cascading infinity of routine enrages my capacity to be an employee.
The problem is one of expectation. In every position I’ve ever had, (which isn’t that many but still) I envision how things should be. As long as I work toward that goal, I can actually be a rather productive contributor. The problem is when the path changes abruptly – the moment things drift away from the ideal, all I see is day after day of maintenance and, for me, work without an end goal is anathema – I’m simply not capable of being happy, or content, or anything other than furious, when faced with the prospect of labor ad infinitum.
My current employment is not evil, or despicable, or staffed by bad or stupid people. It’s a charming place and well intentioned but also impoverished, under-staffed, and I would argue, misdirected in small and pernicious ways. A lack of formality, corporate culture, and hierarchy has left a void that gets filled so haphazardly, so arbitrarily, that any unified accomplishment is quickly disassembled into idiosyncrasy. I am just as responsible as anyone else – I have my own way of doing things and any assault on that process, far from being a business decision, is an assault on my overall vision. More directly: the lack of a definitive corporate ideal has allowed me to stray into private fantasy that now gets trampled on by whims as capricious and poorly staged as my own. We’ve become a circus of library-ronin with our own variations on the future all waging faux war over office furniture. It’s sillyness.
I’ve been as forthright with my employers as can I be considering that I haven’t decided to quit. Like me, they are in limbo, but I have said to them as I intend to say here – I’m actively looking for something else, I’ve got a half dozen something else’s on the horizon, and I’m waiting to see if any of them pick me up. In the mean time I’ve done the work as it comes up and been absolutely enraged by it. Absurdity, foolishness, damn wastes of time. My vision of my work is shattered – but I have a new vision and it involves me working on some new projects from a new locale. I’m enthused – sadly its just not with my work.
Outside of work, things go as things do. The weather is a nuisance and worse but its nice when you don’t have to actively shovel it. It has taken me a bit to get acclimated to having classes again but they are pleasant enough once you slog past the hours of sitting. I continue to write when I can, which isn’t as much as I should like but I’m slowly putting along. The worst part is whens the ideas come in and I am not able to do anything with them. Case in point, Library-Ronin. Two words and I’ve got a world half developed … but when shall I ever have the time to bring it to fruition? Certainly not this year. It’ll be long dead before I am ever able to weave the idea into something that another person could understand – and so it dies. I am saddened by the loss.
A petty complaint in a world with as many problems as this one.
And so I’m off to get whatever things done that I suppose I need to be doing. Allow me to leave with a perfectly preserved Ming vase. I wish the man had quit the factory because he found the vase. That would be a much more inspiration story…
