almost quitting time

Today is one of those days when I sit at my desk shifting stuff from one side to the other. Fact is that I don't want to do any work today. I am bored. I am restless. I wish my job were as exciting as those jobs I see other people do on TV and in the movies. Plenty of jobs suck, we all know that, but there has to be something that is exciting all of the time. Constant excitement might be too much, of course. Contentment is probably better. Then again, some would argue that contentment means not living up to one's abilities.

In my job, there are highs and lows. It might be hard to believe, but it's true. When I try to explain this to my wife, she laughs. My wife is a nurse who works in the intensive care unit at a hospital. People are living or dying there every day. Miracles happen constantly. Someone expected to die somehow pulls through. My wife deals with this all of the time.

In contrast, the greatest challenge in my job might be picking a place to go for lunch each day. There are deadlines in my job, however. The deadlines arrive twice per month, and they are there so that my work must be done by the time they show up. When I find myself two or three weeks out from deadline, in my mind that deadline is not really there. Only when the deadline actually nears does the adrenaline start pumping in my body. With the deadline looming, I am probably putting myself at stress, and doctors would advise me to try to work on a more even keel by spreading the workload out over the weeks before deadline. I'd have less stress, they'd say.

But that's just not how I operate. It's the same way with my dentist. Every time I go to see him, he advises me to lay off the Diet Coke because it rots my teeth. But in my world, laying off the Diet Coke means drinking only half a case a day instead of the whole case.

I guess as I type this blog today, it's a way of keeping myself from doing actual work. It's a delaying device. Seems that I will use any tactic available to keep me from my job.

But the deadline is looming again and I really should start doing stuff I have to do. I can already feel the angst building up. I'll be wishing that I had started my work sooner instead of waiting until the last minute. I'll be telling myself that if I stretched my work out more evenly, I'd be able to produce more copy and of better quality.

But that is something for another day, I think. I can definitely start it tomorrow. When I get into the office tomorrow, I'll turn on my computer and start working from the get-go.

But for today, it's only a few hours until quitting time. No sense jumping into a project when I know that I won't have long to devote to it. It's better if I prepare now for a quick start tomorrow. I should go through my papers and make piles so that tomorrow I'll know what is priority and what is not. Then again, maybe I can put that job off for another hour or so. Seems like there is always something else that can take up my time.

Hey, did I tell you that I bowled a 289 the other day?