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June 28, 2005
On the Job
geekage, life
Programming at a regular, firmly scheduled job is quite strange. For the first time ever, It becomes clear how much time each and every little computery task actually takes, as the daily schedule of start work, eat lunch, and stop work punctuates the programming. Projects and individual tasks which I'd before have said would be quick to complete drag out, taking up what, in the context of the not-so-comfortable office as opposed to that of the easy chair, turn out to be long hours, not to short ones which fly out the window while one's too distracted to notice one's hunger.
Doing a website (or starting to do so) for community service also had this effect; faced with the requirement of logging my hours so that I could get credit for them, the quick tasks which I completed on the website started to fill up the requirement remarkably quickly (although I eventually ended up doing data entry at Habitat for Humanity instead)
Inhabiting a real life workplace also has a few advantages though. Social interaction, as grand as it can be online, seems more fulfilling in person, and the chance to interact with interesting but previously unknown people is greater in real life. Today there was a general summer student meeting which I quite enjoyed, as about half of it was given to socialization, pleasing my starving mind greatly. Unfortunately, my mind is still too lazy to reach out for food through the internet or other lines of communication, but talking with other sharpies helped to ease it's pain. In addition, the ice cream available in real life must be taken into account; most people don't have soft serve machines in their homes.
Writing's coming a bit stiffly today; the words aren't flowing out of my fingertips, but, rather, they're being whipped out by a brain demanding that laziness submit to the forces of happiness. Except said brain isn't as energetic as that sentence makes it out to be. This stiffness seems to derive from the fact that happiness itself is in something of a short supply here, and as such it's sheer mass alone isn't enough to drive out the words and make my fingers eager to type.
I'm not unhappy though. It's just that work (if I have the right to call it that) doesn't supply enough happiness on it's own to keep my engines in prime condition, and the aforementioned laziness is preventing me from seeking out supplements of the magically drug-like combination of music and socialization which I desire. That, and I don't get enough sleep during the week. At any rate, here I depart, leaving wishes that your sleep is undisturbed and full of delightfully interesting dream.
Posted by Trevor Savage at June 28, 2005 8:52 PM