Posts from the ‘confession wednesday’ Category

I give myself pep talks

When I drive in the car sometimes I sing. When I sit at my desk sometimes I dance. Other times when I am at my desk or in the car I give myself pep-talks. No really…it’s like I’m a speaker in a room full of mini-bds.

Why? I don’t know. I just need inspiration sometimes and the only one who knows the subject where I need it the most is me. It’s like when you go to a conference, see a graduation…or watch a movie and some part just hits home. Whatever the lesson or moral of the story -you eat it up. So I target the things I need to hear, like someone is giving the speech…but it’s me talking. So now I get the reward of knowing something I said was helpful to someone, and I help myself too.

How weird…

Other days I daydream about being in a bike race. I’ll put on some music that gets your blood pumping and I’ll think about the work it would take, the struggle…and the reward of finishing. Sometimes I don’t finish first…but I always finish.

Hey it could be worse, I could talk to myself when I look in the mirror…AND respond! :)

Yes I know this is Thursday and I am back posting…shh. I wrote something and you read it. :)
– bd

I need a vacation

I work at a company that gives me the standard two week vacation, which is quite nice combined with the holidays and personal time; but I’m not taking my time off. Last year I had two or three unused vacation days. This year since I had to forgo my bike trip I have almost all of my days left. I won’t get to roll them over to next year and I don’t get paid back for them.

About a month ago I started to feel the pinch of overload and I knew I needed to recharge my batteries…but I didn’t take time off. This month is almost half over and I am in the same spot. Don’t get me wrong, I might be really busy, but I still find lots of time to have fun. I just need a break before I tumble down the “I’m burned out” road many people face when it’s been too long since they took a break.

I’ve just become a workaholic over the years and I don’t like the detachment from my office. The catch? I’m not a workaholic. What nonsense am I spilling out now? Well I have the detachment issues with work like a workaholic does, but for almost a year the pride I take in my work and the effort I exert to do my work has fallen drastically. Now I feel guilty. I feel bad when a problem happens and I can’t help, or when someone has to call me and I have to walk them through it. Maybe if I would have done something differently the problem wouldn’t have happened. On top of that, I feel like I don’t deserve my time off because I have taken “time off” while I have been at work. Now that “time off” has caught up to me and everything I fell behind in needs to be finished…right when I need to get out of the office.

the lesson…

Don’t do as I do: do your work at work and keep the non-work stuff to a minimum at work. That way you’ll never feel guilty about leaving work. When you don things, do them right the first time so you don’t have to go back and redo your work. Damn I don’t know where I lost my way along the path, but I’m feeling the pinch.

I want to dye my hair

I’m crazy. I really want to get red (not auburn) piecey, highlights in my hair. Why? I donno, but I have always liked the look of dark hair with red highlights…maybe even a miz of white in there too. The catch? I can’t do it…I would never be able to pull it off at the company I currently work at. How frustrating is that? Something I just want to try for a little bit I can’t do…unless I pay some serious money to get it done very well and then if it looks too edgy I can pay some serious money to have it dyed back. That’s a HUGE waste of money. I don’t know why, but it seems women can get away with the change in hair style and color much easier then men. Why is that?

Once, I wanted to grow my hair out too…but that only lasted 4 months then I cut the sides and back…let the top grown for another 2 months. I couldn’t take the “bad hair days” any longer and cut it the same way I had 6 months before.

What have you wanted to do to your appearance, but couldn;t for fear of reppremad at work or just the looks people would give you?

I dance at my desk

I do! Now this post is not to be confused with Confession Wednesday #2: I sing out loud in my car. That was singing and this is dancing. Keep up!

I have a massive chunk of my digital music catalog at work, because I listen to music all day while I think of solutions to <a href="http://anonymouscoworker.blogspot.com/
“>Anonymous Coworker’s necrophilia issues. I’m kidding! I just wanted to steal some of his Google hits. Back to the point…

So I listen to music at work, but there are sometimes when I catch myself dancing in my seat to the point it’s hard to type. Is that so bad? I mean everyone needs a break to the daily grand sometimes so why not dance my problems away?

I just bought Soulwax: Nite Visions; it has a clubby beat with some rock tossed in (don’t ask why I say rock, but there is rock in it I’m telling you!) – I danced in my office to it yesterday during work, in my car after work, this morning on my way to work and I am listening to it now. I’m stomping my foot right now…

What’s my point? Well I never usually have one, I just ramble for hours on end…just like this lead in…

My point is that music helps my day go by faster and “better”. At lunch I close my office door, turn up the music and rock out while I eat, surf the web, do my homework and play poker. Forget the odd looks from coworkers, forget the background noise when you answer the phone: being professional is overrated! Just ask the professionals before you where it got them! Company car? Who cares! Bigger salaries? Who cares!

Dance, I say. Dance.

I lie about my age

So my birthday is coming up in less then two months and I have been lying about my age for almost a full year. It’s not because I need to get into bars, try and pick up older women (or younger) nor is it because I really want to be on the next MTV Real World season. It’s because I forgot how old I was.

No joke.

I found an email from December of last year that shows my first offense. Since that time when at family functions or out with friends and people ask how old I am or we joke about who the oldest is I would tell everyone I was 28; even though I just turned 27. This summer it came up in one of my classes when one girl was talking about how she felt so old in her classes and made a joke about being at the University for almost 10 years…I chimed in that I was in the same boat and mentioned I was 28.

If that wasn’t funny enough for you, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this next part.

My blogger profile shows I am 27 along with a few other websites. I thought that all of these sites were messed up and using years instead of actually calculating birthdays or they had some year 2000 bug still unchecked. Yea, I thought they were calculating it incorrectly. So a few weeks ago I noticed it again in my blogger profile and I decided that was it…I was going to report the bug. First (thankfully) I got out the trusty calculator and figured out my age. 27. Maybe I did something wrong…I check it again. 27. Then the memories come back of all the times I said I was 28.

Needless to say that since then I have to think when someone asks me how old I am because I have two ages now. I also have been writing my birthday as the current date; so I would put 09/21/2005 as my birthday if you asked me to write it down.

On the positive side, I’ll be 28 for another year!

Another day another dollar

It might be time for a sabbatical. Not from blogging…but from the I.T. industry. What?! Yup, I am really thinking about it and weighing my options. After passing my 12 year anniversary this summer I’m beginning to wonder what happened to the energetic person I used to be in an office. Backwards companies, strange politics, random assignments, lack of job structure and wacky people; while common in the “real world”, now becoming all too familiar in my world.

I’ve been burned out for a few years now and it’s taking it toll on me. I’ll get excited and motivated, but only in brief spurts. I have projects and ideas scribbled over scraps of paper and notebooks filled with diagrams and concepts…shelves filled with books…racks of computers; all for work I want to research, but I don’t have the energy to start. It’s not for lack of drive, but lack of strength to continue. I gave I.T. more than 100% and I feel like it has zapped 80% of my energy. Like I am constantly battling a brick wall: I feel drained.

Maybe I’m just starting to see the light after the last few years of feeling like I was in a bottomless pit…maybe this is just the start of climbing out? I’m not sure. I’ve made some cracks in the walls of a few companies, but at the end of the day I wave the white flag and move on.

Maybe it’s time to take a break and get recharged.

“If you neglect to recharge a battery, it dies. And if you run full speed ahead without stopping for water, you lose momentum to finish the race.”
– Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine, April 2003