On the Road (to Insanity)

A couple of months ago, I wrote a poem about accepting a new job. I consider it to be one of my better pieces. It looks like this:

On the Road

Anticipation and reluctance,
genuine opposites, fight for the summit--
something new versus status quo.
Accomplish everything attempted
and try it all. Success smells sweeter
than succulent strawberries in summer.

Forgive only that which is not tested
to the best of our abilities.
Knowledge rounds the square
and sets perpetual motion
to the stillness of ennui.

Wade not when you can dive,
want not when you can have.
Take it, taste it, and use it
to your advantage.

Contentment serves only the dreamless.
Strive for utopia and sculpt your place within.
Reluctance shall lose to willingness—
gather greatness in victorious reflection.

Well, ever since, this job has been challenging my sanity and my wisdom. I wrote previously about a publication we were trying to complete. Yesterday, I ran the final draft. I must have made a half dozen trips all the way down to the other end of the floor to pick up prints from the color printer. I even made a trip when no print existed. I just about wore myself out. We shall see if this final draft survives, my manager was making copious notes on it at one point today.

Today, we had a major problem with some security issues. Someone all of a sudden decided that I no longer needed access to some of the functions of my old job. It doesn't seem to bother them that I'm still helping with my old job and I need some of these functions for my new job, oh no. The only one it bothered was me! So, I found plenty of other stuff to keep me busy.

I dropped off the final draft twice. She wasn't there the first time. I took the elevator down for the first time in probably five weeks so I could end up in the basement. I actually ended up on the first floor and had to switch elevators to go down the last one. If I had decided to take the stairs, I'm sure that those thousand sheets of paper I was carrying would have been happy to scatter on me.

The basement, by the way, houses electronic printing. We decided to put some quarterly reports I did into a book form to make them look real pretty and presentable. I only got there after submitting a second request for tabs from electronic publishing. Wouldn't you know that the "new form" button meant "reset form" rather than submit a new document? But, of course. Only, the second time, I got smart and printed it before I "sent" or "reset" it. So I walked down there and had my tabs made on the spot.

The master database we're working on is coming along nicely. Fortunately, my security for the queries I run wasn't affected. I also got to re-write something of my job description. I may actually get myself classified correctly under this new salary scale. There is some hope in the world after all.

Some of you may now that I have been logging my steps for over a year now. When I first started, I was lucky to break 10,000 steps once every three months. Last week alone, I broke that barrier three times. This week, I seem to be running myself ragged. I think I will have two days running at over 10,000. I need to slow down some.