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2000-12-09 Warning: Thar be kvetching ahead. It's always interesting when things explode on a friday. I mean, literally. The transformer across the street exploded last friday, and we lost power to the building at about 4:30. We went home shortly thereafter. Well, once backup power came on and I could finish uploading a Web standards site to the server. And send an email or two. And...*poof*. Well, there went backup power. I think I might be a workaholic. Particularly telling to me is the response: "You probably find personal relationships with family and friends stressful. If you chose "B" for questions 2 and 6, you should examine whether your career is damaging your personal relationships." Is that why I have no friends anymore? Onward we press. This week work got very slow with an nearly audible ker-thunk. In one afternoon I sent "deliverables" -- that's what all the hip professionals call "files" now -- to three clients. One project died a natural death. One is on hold, and another two are someone else's problem now. Suddenly I'm left alone in my office with a very full inbox in Eudora and a couple of designers who I suervise asking if there's anything to do. Walking to a meeting earlier this week, my boss asked me what I wanted to be doing for our company. What I wanted to do. While she asked it completely out of the blue, so I didn't really have an answer at the time, it's still a really good question. I don't know. I like making ads, from concept to creation. I like designing web pages, even if it means suffering through meetings with the 'client.' I'd like to be able to point to my recent body of work and say "I did this." But right now I can't. There isn't enough art in our workload at work. There's more than enough politics, meetings, email discussions, and standards documents. But not so much art, and I don't even mean Capital-A Art. All I know is that when I get home I feel like I've done nothing but run in circles all day, and I'm too tired to create anything else. This is Jack's dead imagination. Well, changes are afoot. Lots of reorganization going on outside the department (and the real kind of reorganization, not the euphemism for "layoffs" kind); I know my boss has been writing standards documents and things like "Defining My Role in the Organization." Changes are happening. I have to push past the bland feelings and figure out what it is that I want and why, before change just happens around me. Change comes from within. OK, done kvetching. You can come out of your bunkers now. We went to the company Christmas Party. We didn't get there until late and missed the yearly video, which is often a highlight of the event. Oh well. Free food and cocktails ("All the Kool-Aid you can drink!"), and it was at the (relatively) recently renovated City Hall. So if nothing else, it was pretty, and I got to see several people with whom I work moderately sauced. The Christmas shopping season has begun. I'm really not so keen on shopping, though I like a) spending money on myself and others, and b) wrapping presents. [Maybe I should quit my job and do seasonal work in gift wrap? Hmm.] So in some ways I really enjoy this time of year. In other ways, however, I really don't want to put on shoes and fight the crowds in Macy's today. Our Gothic Dolly Angel of Death is perched atop the tree again this year. While I threatened to cancel the whole even until we threw away the junk in the living room, the Roommate (who is almost done shopping already, the rat!) has too many wrapped presents already to not have a tree. OK, that's a rationalization on my part. I think he's perfectly aware that I love decorating too much to not put up the tree. I also promised a friend at work that I'd show her pictures of my gothy little tree, but I've forgotten where my crappy little polaroids of it went. I think rather than hunting them down, I'll just try to take better pictures of it first. Besides which, this year we added glow-in-the-dark spiders to the ornaments. I told you I liked decorating. _Casey
2003-03-29 - Moving Notice |
