Coming out in a nasty rash

Do you think maybe work is like peanuts?

If you have too much of it, too soon, you run the risk of coming out in a rash at some point in a few years time, or worse, developing a condition where your whole body swells and it gets hard to breathe? If you have a genetic predisposition maybe, if others in your family have had similar sensitivities.

Or maybe a job is like random mystery nuts – you just can’t tell in advance whether it’s some benign almond, omega 3 rish walnut, or potentially life threatening peanut.

It’s not that bad.

But I am starting to wonder whether exposure is necessarily mellowing my experience of work. This particular job. I haven’t blogged about it for a while (hey, I haven’t blogged at all much for a while), but for those who have been reading this blog on and off for a while the themes will be familiar. For those who haven’t, here is an abridged version, in suitably workish dot points (dot points make the modern office go round after all):
- Golly jeepers, what a lovely workplace I find myself in – such inspired, highly talented, passionate people! Such a nicely fitted out eco-office! Such an array of nice tea! Such green and lush pot plants! Such a participative, consultative, strategic, big picture culture! Yah. Etc.
- Whoa Nelly! What’s that? Another project for me? Gee the work here is diverse. Oh and abundant too, richly, lushly, dripping from the walls type abundant. What’s that – there’s nothing we wont try our hand at? Really? So I guess I’ll be doing some work on another topic I know nothing much about and will be thrown in the deep end on and quietly shitting my pants about whether I’ll be able to do– oh yah? Etc.
- Ugh. What time is it? 10pm? Again? Have I just worked through dinner and typed my fingers off to meet a deadline? Hmm. Looks like I have. Am I wishing I was better at saying no to things? A bit. Wishing that I didn’t feel so responsible for everything, want everything to be done well, feel like I have to do everything I’ve said yes to. You betcha. I’d be passionately regretting a few decisions right now, but I’m too tired to be particularly passionate about anything and I have to hurry down the road to get noodles before the Thai takeaway closes. Oh fuck it, maybe I’ll just have a biscuit or a piece of toast and get home instead.
- Hmmm. I’m really over being here. I think I might take Christmas holidays early, and do my darndest not to have anything to do with the place for a few weeks. Maybe I’ll skip the Christmas party too, because I can’t stand to be around these cheery, enthusiastic, fabulously talented, fresh faced, committed, consultative, friendly folk. I think cranky is taking up all the room where my cheery used to be.
- Aaah, new year, new leaf. It’s all not bad really. I’ve got a lot done in this role, some good experience. Not sure exactly what in – kind of in everything, kind of in nothing in particular. That’s ok – a new year, new opportunities. Training, I’ll do some training. Holidays, I’ll take some. Publishing stuff – I’ll do that.
- Erm. Do I actually like doing this kind of work? I mean sure, I like the intentions and themes that the organization tackles, and sometimes I get engrossed in exciting little problems to nut out, tricky thinking and diagrams to draw to capture that willowy wispy spiderweb of thought as we float around in new space. But. I don’t like this tick box, fill out a detailed timesheet kind of shebang. I don’t like this jumping all over the place in topics and never getting to dwell, and go deep, deep enough. I don’t like this sometimes working with people whose thinking is tick tock a few clicks slower than mine, and having to be patient (or pretend unconvincingly to be patient), having to share thinking around and let people catch up, having to file innovation away in dog eared folders and wait for the right time, gently suggest and encourage and wait 18 months till people are ready to try something new. Slow. Boring. Step by step dullard predestined bollocks.
- Also, sometimes I can’t stand working with other people. Yes I realize this isn’t something you’re meant to say – it’s not cool to be antisococial and critical of happy chatty office peers. But too bad, that’s how I feel. I find it all very noisy, talky, annoying, interrupty. Sometimes even the haw haw laugh of someone over the partition can make my skind crawl with annoyance and make me want to up and leave. Sometimes I want a quiet little office with a window and a pot plant or two and contact with people to be something I get some say over, nice, preorganised meetings or the occasional spontaneous coffee catch up, but not this constant chaotic cacophony of sound and dance of contact, erratic, boundless contact and conversation. Right in the middle of thinking about something. Or scrap the work and just make my job to answer questions and have cups of tea, then I wouldn’t bother getting started on anything that could be interrupted.
- Jackhammers?? Jack hammers?? Across the road? For three months? You have got to be kidding? Oh. Oh I see – you weren’t.
And then, lucky last:
- Hey, spontaneous, guess what, I’m going to rent some studio space, and go 4 days a week. Yeah, I’m going to art stuff every week, make some room for it in my life. I love drawing and painting and making a mess, and I want to do it even if I don’t know why or for what, yeah, have some contrast, have some imaginative, creative, me-directed work in my life. Woohoo – colours, what fun. Oh. You mean I have to go back in the office now? Already? But I only just got started, oh shit.

So there you have it, a comprehensive executive summary of the work related woes I wallow in from time to time. I guess now is a time of change; 2 years into the role, trying to learn from the last two years and be careful to not overload with projects, trying not to be a workaholic (because I know I can’t sustain it, and after too many months of long hour weeks I will end up standing on the board room table screaming ‘guess what? I don’t give a shit, I’m going to a forest somewhere to watch the bugs eat leaves. Help yourselves to my desk drawer post it note collection, I’m leaving!’).

I’m trying to get into the rhythm of a 4 day office work week, and how to use the day in the studio in the best way, and not end up using it as a ‘go to the post office and catch up on paperwork at home’ day. How to have projects for myself that give the time some structure, and also space for those days of whim and inspiration and off on a tangent. How to think tentatively about what might come of this, without making it a list making box ticking enterprise.

Using new muscles, moving in new directions. Takes a lot of energy, and be achy afterwards, but in time, it gets easier, you extend your repertoire.