Dark Chocolate of the Soul

So last week I went on vacation.  I went to England with my folks, and we had a great time.  It was what my mom wanted for her 50th wedding anniversary present, and as presents go, allowing yourself to be taken to London for a week is a lot harder on the receiver than on the gift-giver, so I was happy to oblige.

 

Unfortunately, it's left me a little jaded upon returning to work.  It's true that work runs you down and makes you exhausted, until your short term memory erodes and you forget completely what your own name is or what you were working on twenty seconds ago.  [An aside--multitasking is totally not as effective as you think it is.  I'm fairly sure there's scientific evidence, but if you need anecdotal evidence, you just let me know.]  But working for six months also builds up a hard candy shell of resistance to the absurdity of your job.  Your perspective disappears, and you start to think a little less like Dilbert and a little more like Catbert.  I'm not saying work makes you inhuman, but…well, actually, maybe that is what I'm saying.

 

Now I have my perspective back, and it is devastating.  My patience has evaporated.  I no longer have infinite patience to deal with the fact that the entire business world is full of MBA's who can't do simple math (we have 350 projects that represent 800,000 man-hours of work, but we only have 6 people, who in a year can work a maximum of 18,000 hours before they actually claw our eyes out--hey, wait a minute, there's a deficit).  I'm disappointed to realize that someone who took a stand against a particularly egregious situation two weeks ago has now been suckered into taking part in said egregious situation.  For a moment this morning I was bucked up by the fact that I was asked my opinion on a seminar on requirements management--then I heard that the audience was only going to include the one other person on our team who has some understanding of requirements and how they're important.

 

I kind of want to scream or quit or mount a quiet resistance movement.  But instead I'm resorting to chocolate and caffeine, and then tonight I'll try to make it to the gym and run it out, because Shifter seriously inspires me (apart from the part about how he feels sick and dizzy, but you know what I mean).