Thursday, August 09, 2007

But it's damn annoying when I want to get a few simple facts out of someone for a news story and call it a night, but first I have to figure out how to respond to hearing that she already has heard so much about me, and my parents are so proud, and would I like to go to the party they're having on Saturday?


Hmmm. I feel like I should expand on that from the last post. After all, one might think, what is so hard to figure out there? Well, what I actually wound up doing was being cool but polite. Smiling and stuff, but not as effusive as her, and not ruling Saturday out but not committing to it either. A similar greeting with a few details different might have earned a very different reaction from me. If she had been someone I was interested in getting to know rather than just quote in an article, or if she had acknowledged knowing me but been less personal about it ("Your parents have told me so much about you") or if I had known about it in advance rather than being caught flatfooted, I might have openly, maybe even genuinely, returned the sentiment.

All this kind of ties in to something I've been thinking about for the past week. My job is good overall, yeah, but I'm not doing myself any favors if I imagine it's the best I could hope for, and one thing I've noticed relatively recently is that I can't help taking my work home with me. If I were really disciplined and devoted to it* or if I had natural advantages like a decade of experience or living in my coverage area then this problem would be practically unnoticeable, but I'm not and I don't.

Examples? I have night meetings at varying times that change from week to week; they don't take up much time, but I have to block off certain nights just in case. (For example, I can't commit to raiding with my guild on Tuesdays because the school board meets on Tuesdays and I sometimes have to go to those meetings... now that I think of it, this is dumb; I've been going to that so rarely that I could get into the raiding rotation. Well, let's shoot for next week.) I thought I had to go to a public informational meeting tonight, which would have meant no Drinking Liberally. I get calls back after work or on my lunch break relatively often. I can't just relax when I'm passing through my towns because I have to keep my ears open for anything newsworthy. And, of course, there's all the stuff with meeting people who know my parents.

Yeah, some of this stuff is really minor, and on the whole I have a good job, and night meetings have a flip side in that the job has flexible hours. But this is related to the "my social life sucks" complaint that I make so often: in addition to keeping half an eye open for a job in a larger city, I should also lean towards avoiding a job that follows me home.

* What do I mean by this? Not blogging during work, for example. :)

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