Some other notes on this week

[serene]

The other day (it may have been Sunday or Monday), someotherguy was reading me some of his correspondence with one of his less coherent fundies. His fundies are interesting people. They see his website, take it upon themselves to write to him in order to convert him, ignore his questions and calls for evidence to back up their claims, and then get mad because he's being mean to them. The ones that really bother me, though, are the ones who write "out of love," they say, in order to do something about his poor damned eternal soul, and then when he makes fun of them, they get mean and insulting. Out of love, of course.

This, in one of my brain's odd tangents, got me thinking that the thing that bothers me most in life is people who want to tell me how to live, when their own morals are either inconsistent or loathsome to me; which in turn got me thinking about my own moral inconsistencies. There are things I want to do better -- I want to put more effort into defeating Bush and ending the war. I want to put more energy into my art and the Munchkins. But the two things that jumped out at me as personal ethical inconsistencies (I am using "moral" and "ethical" interchangeably here, because in my internal, godless universe, they are effectively equivalent) were these:

1) I am ethically opposed to killing animals for non-essential food, clothing, etc., yet I have been eating meat and buying (a very small amount of) leather in the last year and a half. (Note that I am not saying anyone else should be ethically opposed to killing animals for food -- I'm just saying that it's a personal ethic of mine and I haven't been paying attention to it these days.)

2) I am ethically opposed to taking things that are not mine to take, and I've been using company time to do personal things on the internet lately.

I am probably doing other unethical things, but these two came quickly to mind, and I decided to stop. I stopped eating meat the other day, when this thought process happened, and as soon as lunch is over, I'm closing my personal browser. Work will not be as fun without the web, but they're not paying me to have fun, and I do always have work I could be doing instead of checking my email.





The slam was so fun. I ended up being selected to go first. I was SO nervous. I wasn't able to project my voice, because my throat kind of closes up when I'm nervous, but I was proud of myself anyway, and I had a ton of fun, and my score was non-egregious, and my boys both got to see me perform, which was the best part.





The capsule version is: I don't have much. Social energy, that is. And it feels okay to me. I don't feel a huge urgency to see everyone right this second, and I know I will spend more time with folks when I have more energy to give. This weekend, gonna spend time with stonebender, going to the movies and just hanging out, and in a couple of weeks, I'm going to go down to San Diego and see my family. Maybe after that I'll have more energy to expend on getting together with folks, and maybe not. It's gonna be okay. (By the way, if you do want to get together with me and are willing to spend the social energy of initiating contact with me and suggesting a time, I'm up for it.)



Ten minutes left on my lunch break. Ate my egg-salad sandwich, and now I'm just going to take a few minutes to relax and read my friends list. Thanks to everyone who's been so supportive of me lately; it's meant a really lot.

Comments

[nolly.livejournal.com]

This is a true-for-me thing, which may not be true for anyone else.

I find that I am much more effective at work when I mix work-stuff with personal net-stuff, within reason. The most work I've gotten done lately has been while chatting with a new flirt-object on IM. At a previous job, where they were very cranky about non-work 'net use, I would get bored and have trouble focussing on work.

work ethics

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

same for me. now, this also depends on the type of job; it's more true for anything that requires me to think a lot and be creative, and not true for work that doesn't require much thought. with the latter i can daydream while my fingers do the work, and that suffices to keep me actively doing something. for the former i get a huge amount more done when i am left to work whenever my brain can do it well, and left to play whenever the brain needs a break. my concentration periods have gotten shorter over the years, too.

i used to feel massively guilty that i couldn't concentrate 8 hours at a time with a short break, until i figured out that nobody else could either. afterwards i thought "well, duh" -- it's not like evolution knew about office work. :)

Re: work ethics

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm with you on that. (However, much of my job is done by rote, so when I'm tired of the thinking parts, I can always go grab a stack of files and sort through them, or file some stuff, or something.)

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I am much more effective at work when I mix work-stuff with personal net-stuff, within reason.

Ditto. My brain needs the break, and to have lots of _different_ things to do.

[firinel.livejournal.com]

Same for me. For me to be my most enthusiastic about work, I need to be working on at least three different projects.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Yes, I need occasional new things to look at to stay productive, but I have things to do at work that can shift my focus and give me a new energy burst.

Mainly, though, I don't think it's up to me to decide that it's okay to do personal stuff on work time. If the boss says "go ahead," as they did at my last job, that's one thing, but I can't justify it (for me, personally, in my personal ethical system) otherwise, and I don't want to do it badly enough that I'm gonna go ask my current boss if it's okay. (That, and I did sign an agreement when I was hired at the temp service that said I wouldn't do personal 'net stuff on company time.)

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

*nod* That makes sense to me, but in my case, there's plenty of other work to do to keep me interested, and I'm paid by the hour, so that time doesn't really belong to me.