The Sound a Job Makes
I have been under an oppressive regime! Work has filled my days and sometimes my nights, but all of my waking attention. My goals are long forgotten. There is no sense to the messy march of progress. I like to think that in a time of great urgency there will be a visible, tangible landmark to keep one’s bearings, to point at with a finger and say “there it is”, and feel assured. But there is none. Only more work, crashing in from angles each more unpredictable than the last, and a cold deadline, a week or so from today.
There is a point in the working world nowadays that has come to be known as “crunch time”. The assumed wisdom is that the name was earned by the sound made by placing your self-esteem, personal ambition, and dignity in a small paper box, and placing it on the footpath of a thousand hormone-injected elephants all chasing the same grazing female. Those elephants are called the competition, friend, and you’re in their way. Crunch time comes around when opportunity abounds. When you’re riding a personal high, for instance, or when summer is about to start. Long weekends are a great time for a herd of smack-crazed elephants to trample on whatever you’ve got left. Crunch time knows best.
There is shame. Shame comes in many forms. One form, you might say, comes from from a lack of grace in the face of helplessness, or cracking under pressure. Another comes from finding yourself suddenly in the dark because the building’s auto light shutoff timer kicks in after 7 PM, and you’ve got to go to the other side of the office and flick them back on every fifteen minutes or so. That’s shame. A third is knowing you’ve left a stressful day in a cool, air-conditioned office to go home to an apartment that feels like being inside a kiln in East Hades, and seriously contemplating going back. That’s shame, but it’s also discomfort, and remorse, and a host of other dysfunctions, each of them trod upon by a horny mastodon, and making a delicious cracking noise.
But it’s only for a week longer. I am rather sparse at the moment, stealing a few moments here and there to do laundry, send emails, and so on. This should all be over soon, at which point I can reconvene here and not really tell you all about it.
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(3 comments)
yikes. I thought everyone took half-days in montreal starting July 1, or the first 30 deg day, whichever comes first. you going to the hippie computer guys thing on sunday? copyright2005 … rms will be there. i’ll be there too.
Hugh: such is the life of working for an American company. Once this week is over I will insist on the half-days. Alas it looks like copyright2005 will pass me by, because I’m (right now) guess where…the office. I have seen RMS speak, and he’s an interesting fellow, but be warned…if he starts trying to sing the Free Software Song, head for the nearest exit immediately out of concern for your own mental health.
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