Sunday, January 23, 2011

It's a Disease

I'm concluding that my lapse in posting this month is a direct result of a more intense schedule at work. Kicking it up from 0.6 to 0.8 full time equivalent is apparently a bigger incremental increase in time than I'd predicted. It feels like a lot more and for all practical purposes is a full time proposition by the time the hours add up; well over 40/wk for sure. I shouldn't whine; at least I'm gainfully employed and valued by those who pay my salary. Plus, I have great colleagues.

I find myself perpetually connected to my work. I find it impossible to stay away from my computer link to work on days off, weekends. I rationalize by telling myself that I'm just getting "ahead of the wave" of work that will stack into deeper piles if I don't whack it back. Instead of batching my work and taking a chunk of time during my work day to tackle it, I am irresistibly  tempted to just do it now so I won't have to do it later. True: my inbox is manageable but only because I'm constantly sweeping it. Curiously, the inbox is less of a physical entity, although it is that too. The inbox is all the stuff I can knock off from home on a laptop wired into my office. Mixed blessing, this.

With discipline, I suppose I could keep myself from logging on but to not do so makes me ANXIOUS and what do we do when we are ANXIOUS?  We do what needs to be done to ease the feeling.

It's this whole "ahead of the wave" business. My blog does not carry the title on a whim. It's me...it's how I deal with so much in my life (but not all; some weird exceptions) Seriously. I hate surprises, curve balls, stuffed in-boxes, and disasters that might have been averted had I only been connected.  T'is a disease. Truly. One I can see but feel powerless to tackle. Not sure I even want to change my modus operandi.  My methods work....until I hit the wall at 100 miles an hour. Having been through that once 5 years ago, I need to learn from past experiences.

2 comments:

  1. Work has a sneaky way of taking over life.

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  2. Planning ahead usually works for me, too, though some things just can't be seen or dealt with ahead of time. Life was simpler when we didn't have all this technology to keep us connected 24/7. We knew what we needed to know and dealt just with what was on our desk.

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