I took yesterday off due to niggling back ache, modest shoulder pain, serious sleeplessness and extreme disillusionment.
It was a good choice: I slept in a little - maybe an hour, which is pretty good for me; had a leisurely breakfast; wandered in search of coffee and newspaper; then, having acquired those two essential props, I lay in the park in the sun and did the crossword. While listening to Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency read by the author.
Magical morning.
I'd planned on going to see Kick Ass at the cinema down the road but it was such a beautiful day I couldn't justify being out of the sun for that long. Instead I took a long walk through Newtown in search of interesting graffiti and weird people. Two things that my suburb has in spades. I took many photos of graffiti but none of people - I'm not confident enough to be able to bowl up to someone and say "you look fascinating - can I take a picture to put on the internet?". Probably for the best since most of them are the people who'd say "fuck off!", "sure, that'll be $50" or "what's the internet?".
I'm struggling with my professional life at the moment. Struggling to call it 'professional' for a start. I've been looking for something else to interest me but currently with very little success. And less enthusiasm. I'm tending to choose to enjoy my life and time away from work rather than use it to update my CV, investigate job leads, look at training possibilities, network (argh) with possible contacts, etc etc ad nauseum. I admire those who are driven to do this kind of thing but honestly when it comes to a choice between writing my CV or lying in the sun with a book I think you know where my heart is. And most of the rest of my organs.
But anyway - back at work today and, as you can tell, really flat out doing stuff I love. Actually I guess I am: I'm spending most of my time surfing teh interwebs. Would post some of the links here but I'm really trying to resist turning this into a link blog. Although I will plug Michelle's Take Your Blog To Work Day, an idea I may shamelessly rip-off at some stage. If my work ever becomes interesting.
3 comments:
Ah I love the Dirk Gently Books! What a great way to spend the afternoon!
Re lack of interest in your professional life, speaking as someone who's just taken a four hour lunchbreak in order to finish a (not even that good) book simply because for the first time in ages the sun was shining into the back yard & quite frankly sitting on the doorstep reading even a badly written book was infinitely more preferable than finishing writing my business profile for a local gov. business agency even though doing so would (hopefully) bring me some cash to add plants to aforementioned yard.I think I get where you're coming from.
Perhaps because you feel that you need to use your time away from work to do all the CV updating, networking etc that's why you dont' want to do it. Time away from work is time away from work & all that stuff above falls squarely into work mode. Is there anyway you can divide up your worktime to take account of that stuff?
(Bit difficult commenting on it as I'm not sure what you do & I know it's easier to adjust hours if you're self-employed or have a less regimented job but even in a job where you're every moment is being watched by a beady eyed boss you can get loads done on a CV (for example) in a couple of lunch hours (if you find the right cafe/park etc...and somehow having a regimented time to have something completed in means that you just get it done rather than spend hours agonising over it (like this bloody company profile I'm meant to be writing).
I think you're on to something there helena: I work for the government and as such my day is pretty free-form, I can get away with spending quite a bit of time on my cv rather than actually doing work. And no-one will notice. Which is one of the reasons I want a new job.
I think you're right about the 'time away from work time'. I have to keep that as non-work orientated. I know there are people in this world who are entrepreneurial and always looking for opportunity and thinking about furthering their professional lives even when not 'at the office'. I am not one of those people - time spent at work is time grudgingly given, time away from work is jealously guarded from incursions.
If you can use your work time to do your work then you're in the ideal situation - when I've been employed in the past then I always found I could actually whizz through what my employers wanted from me in about a 1/3 to 2/3 of the time they'd actually allocated, leaving the rest of the time free to pursue my own stuff. Coincidentally it always made me way better at the actual job I was being paid to do as I didn't waste time hating it!
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