Nar Dah

Work has been hectic of late. Actually not really just hectic, it's been complete madness... in fact I dare say hellish.

Everything is just flying and that's not a good thing when you haven't enough time to handle everything as well as you'd like to. Days are taken up with meetings after meetings, when you have an available moment, the phone invariably rings and ruins your day because you find yourself having to manage that urgent situation when there are 10 other urgent cases like deadlines and projects waiting in the wing in your ever growing in-tray. If it's not the phone, then it's the email. The messages keep coming, I do so fantasize of the day that Y2K actually did wreak havoc on our modern technology. It'll be snail mail...

*fantasy dream Scene* cue music - cue hazy vision - BEGIN!* ...By sea or air please the staff asks? Make it slow, we are all cutting costs so by sea please, I'd purr. If it was urgent... I mean really urgent, then a telegram please or if it was cheap enough then a direct phone call. Now stop bothering me, I have work to do... *CUT! - Lights! - *fantasy dream Scene ends*

Damn I reckon I could be doing research, writing papers and presenting at conferences regularly with all that time to work, think, reflect and act on matters, without emails and phone calls constantly pulling me away from other work. What a dream that would be...

But back to reality, everyone is depending on you to make it the best that it can be but I'm wondering with all this work I complete as best I can under the circumstances and slip into my 'out' tray... I just know it's one of those things where there is always a high probability that it'll just come back to haunt me later. Why you ask? Because no matter how much I say I've done it to the best of my ability, the fact that I have so many things in the air now and I'm really freaking out. I know I could have done an even better job if I just had more time to think about it, consider it that little bit longer, had just that little bit more time to craft it before sending it out for clearance. So it goes that because I'm now bogged down with so many things that I can't seem to see straight much less think straight, these out tray items will most likely come back and hit me where it hurts. It'll require another round... a round which I feel sick thinking of because it'll mean it being in my in-tray joining an ever growing heap of 'things-to-do' and everyone of those items are marked urgent.

Now you might say, if only I'd done them right then it won't come back for another round. True I totally agree, but I know that the work is as good as its going to get at that moment in time.

It's even more maddening when I think I've really done a great job on something and sent it on it's way only for the work to be torn in to and re-edited to such ends that one wonders whether I needed to provide any sort of input whatsoever. So I work. I'm a working stiff, we tell ourselves that we are making a difference but I think otherwise. I say I'm like a mice on a wheel, I do a lot of work running all day long but where have I gotten. I end where I started. I feel like this these days and these days suck! I have had too many of these days already this year, it's not healthy. I want to move forward, I want to see farther, do more and feel more. I want out of the office, I want to real contact with people, enough with phones and emails. I need fresh air and time away from the office, from deadlines and urgent matters, from replying to complaints or strange feedback from 'customers' who know better but just want you to experience a bad day like them. I want out of the cage or this rat race...

I wish I was a kid again, on my bike in the neighbourhood, riding from home to home of dear friends to get them out to play without a thought for the time or what game we were going to play. I want to play, experience and learn all over again. I'm tired of people expecting me to know it all. I want to say, I know nothing... leave me be. I am nothing, let me be.

I want a do over... I want to go back to school.