Work

It's the end of March already, and I haven't updated since the end of February.  If I didn't have a pattern going of updating at least once a month, I probably wouldn't get around to doing it now, either.

I don't like work.

That's part of what's going on with this blog.  Once I actually sit down at the keyboard, it's not all that hard to run off at the mouth.  (er ... fingers?)  But getting there in the first place feels like work.  I look at it and it looks like work.  I'm aware of time slipping past, ... another day when I haven't posted anything ... and it just seems like a lot of work.

Of course that's the whole point, isn't it?  Way back when an ex-colleague first encouraged me to start blogging (a story I allude to briefly here), it was because I must have said something in an unguarded moment about wanting to write and he picked up on it.  He said, reasonably enough, that the only way to get good at writing is to write; so if that's something I might want to do some day, then I should do it every single day, somewhere where it doesn't matter if what I crank out is any damned good.  Like a blog, for instance.  After all, it takes ten thousand hours of practice to get good at anything, right?

But what that really means is that the thing is work.  And I am coming to realize that I really don't like work.

It's the same at ... er ... work: I mean the job where I earn an income.  Twenty years ago (different job, different company) I had a lot of energy and ambition.  There were changes I wanted to make in my department, other functions I wanted to take on, empires to build, forests to clear, swamps to drain, dragons to slay ... you know, that kind of thing. 

But not today. 

Oh, I still want to do a good job.  I don't want them to sack my sorry ass.  And it might be nice to wangle a transfer to somewhere else some day, just so I can travel on the company's dime.  Relocation can be an adventure.  It's just that I don't have the same burning sense of wanting to slay dragons and build empires.  When five o'clock rolls around, I start to wonder how soon I can wrap up and go home.  I spend time thinking about dinner, not about corproate development.  I look at my department, realize that every single one of my employees is dysfunctional in one way or other, and just shrug.  I once realized that every organization is a reflection (blown up to large scale) of the boss.  You want to see his personality, look at the group he manages.  So what does it mean that this man never gets anything done on time, and that woman has energy but no brains, and the other woman over there just doesn't give a shit?  Hmmm, sounds familiar.  It should bother me, but somehow it doesn't.

Maybe it's because I'm over fifty.  Maybe it's because my interests are elsewhere ... although where, exactly?  (And in any event, is that a cause or merely a symptom?)  Or maybe it's because I've decided I don't like work.

My money is on the last one.  Now if only I could get this blog to write itself ....