grindstone

No fucking around today after 8am.  I've got to start strong this week.

Last week was mostly wasted.  Poor communication with my work group.  I twiddled my thumbs most of the week, waiting for responses from people, waiting for someone to tell me what I'm supposed to be doing, helpless.  I have no authority and no experience on which to base any initiative, I'm currently just a drone on this assignment, I'm not allowed to do anything without explicit instruction.  So when no instructions come, I wait.

This is a clear contrast to my previous assignment.  By the end of my four years on that, I was damn near running the show in my area, I was the go to guy, I was the only one who knew precisely what the fuck was going on at any given moment, and I was the only guy on speaking terms with every other member of the team, which meant I was the mediator for every little petty dispute.  I was in the thick of it.

Now I'm just a mule to be brought out of the barn and whipped into work, on occasion.  I actually don't mind it much, except in cases like this.  Last week, nobody talked to me.  Until late Friday afternoon when a superior dropped the bombshell of "hey, are you done with [massive two week long pile of work] yet?"  And my response was, essentially, "dude, nobody fucking told me shit, I was supposed to be doing what? what the fuck are you talking about?"  And his response was, basically, "oh right, my bad, well, hop to it ASAP-like, righto?" 

Last week was very busy with everything besides work.  I took a day off to buy a car, and most of my brainspace was taken up by that suffocating and terrifying decision.  When I wasn't preoccupied with that, I still didn't have any work to do, so I learned some money origami.  I'm not bullshitting you, our daycare provider is going to get paid with tiny little origami clothes. 

But then now, all the sudden, I've got a ton of work dumped on my plate that is already past due.  I can't figure out if I'm partially to blame or not, I feel like I was complicit in wasting my time last week, but it's not like I didn't try to find out if there was something I could or should be doing.  I didn't hear back from anybody until late Friday.  I don't think anybody's blaming me, they know the situation, but still, now people are going to be waiting on me to finish this huge pile of work that should have been done already.  It doesn't matter how we got to this scenario, that's a stressful thing.

So no fucking around today.  No leisurely drive about town for a donut or a breakfast sandwich.  No Monday morning warmup reading the news.  No sneaking in a quick video game session before work, nope, Assassin's Creed 3 is going to have to wait in the plastic wrap a little longer.  I have got to fucking work, all day, solid, no fucking around, I've got to get this shit done.  I've had few opportunities in the past year to prove that I'm capable of being productive in this new assignment, it's been a frustrating year, but if I can pull my shit together long enough to have a good week this week and get this shit all caught up in a reasonable amount of time, I think I can use that momentum to end the year on a positive note.