Free as we’ll ever be
I lugged home all my shit from Ye Olde Alligator Farm last night after a 13-hour day in which I still didn’t finish the pre-Monday work.
If anyone wanted to fire me or if I wanted to quit, this would be the right time since I have all of my earthly belongings in the trunk of my car.
On my way out, I saw a family of about 10 tiny brown pigs and two large ones sitting by the roadside. They ran when I pulled out my camera.
Then I saw three cranes or egrets or what the hell ever standing on the highway about three miles later. Not on the roadside. The highway. Silly birds. I hope they’re still OK.
I know that I’ve blamed a lot of my stress on my commute, the building, the other side of the company, whatever. Even though, in the end, none of it really bothered me.
Honestly, I loved most of the people. I enjoyed running over to people’s desks all day to solve problems together instead of doing the ridiculous chain e-mails cc’d to the entire planet that are asked of us for documentation purposes. And the drive time wasn’t so bad because nobody on earth is driving out to Bumfuck Egypt so it was a fast commute most days.
It will be interesting to see how it all works out in the stripped-down version in a better part of town. The building holds terrible memories for me. And I’m still going to have a thousand hours’ worth of work a week to achieve.
I guess I”m looking forward to being able to walk across the street to pick up dinner instead of starving all night and then coming home to a cold dinner that was lovingly cooked three hours earlier.
My new hire has finally concluded that it’s not that I work 75 hours a week — it’s that I do 100 hours’ worth of work in 75 hours. I’ve gotten SO FAST at cranking shit out that trying to teach it to someone is killing my groove and now I’m back to working weekends to finish what I could have done had I not taken the hour-ish a day to try to share my thinking and processes.
I’m not complaining. And I’m not looking for a compliment. But I’d be shocked if they haven’t taken out an insurance policy on me.
In any event, I’m afraid the more things change, the more they will stay the same. It’s my worst nightmare, in fact. Someone finding a way to prove me wrong would be the true thank-you I crave …