2 October << 2001 >> 6 October


5 October, 2001


A Good Laugh

Well, lotsa more postings on Monster.com today. It is, after all, the start of Q4, so companies have Reqs they can open up if they met their Q3 goals.

And my laugh for the day: Police make doughnut run via chopper.

I can always use a good laugh!

Efficacy

So, one thing I've started to wonder, is, could I pull off additional higher education? I was wandering about my old web site this evening, and I stumbled upon my old "academic" folder. If you check out the directories for two of my classes from the fall of 1997, you get the definite vibe that I'm in school for me. And I'm not about to do or finish anything that doesn't seem to be to my benefit. I pay for school, I call the shots. So, some of the work is impressive, but it is not finished, and some of it is fantastically indecipherable. For example, read this. I managed to crank it out, I think, in one sitting or two. Proof-reading it was a bitch. I could not keep all the pedagogy in my head, but in its own way, it is like a satire of attempts to master foreign discursive paradigms.

Or, say, the paper I wrote about technical challenges faced by web internationalization. Dense, sure, but hardly proof-read. I wasn't interested!

But, I've been slowing down. Work? I used to be totally in to work, as I thought it was more important. Check out my glib tone in submitting an incomplete assignment! Yeah, got bigger and better things to do! Helping people get on the 'net! My job used to be exciting to me, that way.

I think, at some point, I lost some of that sense of self-importance. I think this happened at Tellme. I'll have to think about how and why this happened. It may have been back in March when Warren got dismissed. Layoffs? Damn! I thought we were doing important work?! Well, I started slacking around the edges, as I had, back in school. Got to find myself.

So, I guess the question, getting back to what I started talking about, the question is, can I deal with the idea that the hard work I might be engaged in might not have any direct, immediate, or future benefit, to anyone? That I should do a great job on an unimportant assignment for the sake of doing a great job on things, or do I find something to do with my days that is directly meaningful? Or, do these two philosophies somehow complement each other? If I can put aside the distraction of the point of what I am doing, to simply do it with excellence, would I then be in the mode of excellence for when push comes to shove and the actions are in fact, very important, and thus all the quality of action I have built in to my character by frittering my efforts away on the pointless things throughout the year follow through so that I can have maximum efficacy?


2 October << 2001 >> 6 October
/journal
dannyman.toldme


This document last modified Wednesday, 19-Nov-2003 23:24:54 UTC <dannyman@toldme.com>