Ack!
The job is starting to be a major source of stress again. It seems like we go through this every couple of years. Reorganization that is. Or disorganization. What ever you want to call it, it has made me stop and think, “five years ago when I thought this place was @#&@*! up like a football bat, those really were the good old days.” I guess a lot of it has to do with the fact that every time we think there is a light at the end of the tunnel it turns out to be just another train on a collision course with ours. I have sneaking suspicion that every job feels that way a lot of the time if you are the kind of person who has a modicum of dedication and feels obligated to earn your pay, but lately I think we’re even stressing out the slackers.
On the other hand my next book is coming along nicely. I had planned to have it out in the spring of this year, but I may hold off until fall. There are a couple of things that I have already grown to question about it and I think it is really a kind of transitional work in a way. It’s hard to think of it like that when it isn’t even complete, but I see a lot of subtle changes in it that are probably not going to be obvious to the casual observer. Mostly it’s that I have a broader view in this than in my other two books, but at the same time a sharper focus.
I think.
I haven’t written anything new in a couple of months and that is usually a pretty good sign that I have gotten something out of my system so I can move forward to a new mode of expression so I’m a little nervous and expectant about what the new phase may turn out to be. Maybe that is what is exacerbating the work stress. I have coworkers who are more directly and negatively affected by what is going on because they have had to work seven days a week except for a handful of holidays for almost a year and a half now. When you do that your body becomes almost immune to the elevated background level of adrenaline. I know because 2005 was a similar sort of year and it took me almost all of 2006 to actually relax and enjoy a weekend off from work. Working 60 and 70 hour weeks is not just counterproductive, it’s a waking death. I hope we have found another light at the end of the tunnel, and I hope this one will not turn out to be the midnight ghost. Even first class freight trains are a bummer of a ride when they’re on the wrong track.