Where I've been, and where I kneed to be.
As you probably don't know, I've been working in the same position, at the same place for 5 years. To put it in context, if a child was born the day I got this job, by now that child would have learned to sit up, then crawl, then walk, then talk, then read, then started school, and (depending on the country in which the child was born, or the disposition of the child's parents), started work at the local running shoe factory. That is a long-ass time.
And it's not an easy job. It's stressful, and I'm the only person in the job, so all of that stress is mine. The flipside of my independence is that all of the glory of success is mine, too, of course. If by "glory of success," you mean, "management pretending the job does itself over here," in which case, yes. This job is often glorious as shit. Glory coming out of my ass. Drowning in glory.
So, to the surprise and shock of absolutely no one, I'm burning out. I still love the job... when I'm at home, and I've been on vacation for a week, and I can think about it all objectively and without panic. But right now, I need a break, and I finally mustered up to courage to say so to my manager.
To her credit, my manager has been all over this. She immediately arranged for me to transfer to another department for the next 6 months, to refresh my outlook, and give me a break from the frantic pace of my current job.
The new job is totally different. Mostly because I like it, and I'm motivated to actually, well, work really, really hard. So I've been away from the journal for a while. It's hard to keep up the current pace at work, and maintain any kind of a connection to my beloved Inter-web at the same time. But I haven't forgotten about you, dear reader. In fact, I've cooked up this humorous anecdote just for you:
When I woke up this morning, one of my knees was significantly warmer than the other. And very, very sore. I took some Aleve for the pain (ohmygod you have to get your ass some Aleve I'm not even kidding), but the weird hot-knee phenomenon wasn't going away. And didn't go away, all day. So I'm sitting here with one hot knee. The Monk was getting kind of worried, and throwing around words like, "doctor" and "hospital" and "no, seriously."
It was during this discussion that I had a sudden revelation: My knee has a fever. A knee-fever.
I had come down with The Kneever.
After I finished laughing, I found it impossible to discuss my knee-heat without referring to it as "The Kneever." And The Monk isn't known for being patient with me, so he dropped the subject pretty quickly. An unwise move, I think. He should really be on his toes right now. I mean, this is The Kneever we're dealing with. Serious business. It might take him in his sleep. He might find himself waking up tomorrow with one really warm knee. A fate worse than bed-head.
I'm going to go to bed now, and I plan to sing The Monk this warning:
You give me... Kneever.
When you kiss me,
Kneever when you hold me tight.
Kneever!
In the morning,
Kneever all through the night...
And it's not an easy job. It's stressful, and I'm the only person in the job, so all of that stress is mine. The flipside of my independence is that all of the glory of success is mine, too, of course. If by "glory of success," you mean, "management pretending the job does itself over here," in which case, yes. This job is often glorious as shit. Glory coming out of my ass. Drowning in glory.
So, to the surprise and shock of absolutely no one, I'm burning out. I still love the job... when I'm at home, and I've been on vacation for a week, and I can think about it all objectively and without panic. But right now, I need a break, and I finally mustered up to courage to say so to my manager.
To her credit, my manager has been all over this. She immediately arranged for me to transfer to another department for the next 6 months, to refresh my outlook, and give me a break from the frantic pace of my current job.
The new job is totally different. Mostly because I like it, and I'm motivated to actually, well, work really, really hard. So I've been away from the journal for a while. It's hard to keep up the current pace at work, and maintain any kind of a connection to my beloved Inter-web at the same time. But I haven't forgotten about you, dear reader. In fact, I've cooked up this humorous anecdote just for you:
When I woke up this morning, one of my knees was significantly warmer than the other. And very, very sore. I took some Aleve for the pain (ohmygod you have to get your ass some Aleve I'm not even kidding), but the weird hot-knee phenomenon wasn't going away. And didn't go away, all day. So I'm sitting here with one hot knee. The Monk was getting kind of worried, and throwing around words like, "doctor" and "hospital" and "no, seriously."
It was during this discussion that I had a sudden revelation: My knee has a fever. A knee-fever.
I had come down with The Kneever.
After I finished laughing, I found it impossible to discuss my knee-heat without referring to it as "The Kneever." And The Monk isn't known for being patient with me, so he dropped the subject pretty quickly. An unwise move, I think. He should really be on his toes right now. I mean, this is The Kneever we're dealing with. Serious business. It might take him in his sleep. He might find himself waking up tomorrow with one really warm knee. A fate worse than bed-head.
I'm going to go to bed now, and I plan to sing The Monk this warning:
You give me... Kneever.
When you kiss me,
Kneever when you hold me tight.
Kneever!
In the morning,
Kneever all through the night...