ace of all trades

my work tends to be quite reactionary. i spend all day holding up words of protest hand-painted onto flimsy poster board nailed to scraps of splintery wood. haha. no, not that kind of reactionary. more the white collar reactionary whose task list is the outlook inbox and who righteously endeavors to respond to -- id est: react to -- each request as quickly as possible. you could say i am very helpful, but it's more correct to say that knowing people come to me for answers feeds my ego. it's not about being generous - ironically, all my giving is about being selfish. i am your go-to guy. you can count on me. i am Important.

there are 3 major divisions of work in my dept and i work across all the divisions b/c... well, we've been over this -- it's b/c i'm your go-to guy. you can count on me. at any rate, i work across all 3 but all 3 are not created equal. one is supposed to be getting more of my attention than the others, but it is also the quietest one. it hums along merrily in the background. it's an automated assembly line not requiring constant attention & nurturing to keep moving. all sorts of pieces begin to pile up in my queue but since they don't knock on my door [okay, it's a cubicle... all knocks are on the metal strip that runs down the side of the canvas-covered wall unit] or email me or set up a meeting with me - they don't have the same quality of urgency.

but today i drew the line. today i dedicated to project 1 and told my boss and he said «good plan». i hunkered down and dug in and focused on project 1 all day.

emails arrived from my coworkers, all needing something. they came knocking on my metal strip pleading their desperate cases. everything from graphic design to number crunching b/c - did i mention this already? - i am their go-to guy. they count on me for everything. want that jpg tweaked? that report pulled? that file uploaded? got a word document that won't print or that you need proofread or researched or turned into a pdf or folded into an origami swan? give it to ace. ace will do it. ace is our go-to guy. we count on ace for everything.

but today was different. today i said «no». i said it over & over & over again. sometimes it feels like saying «no» takes as much time as actually doing the whatever, and i know that's what these people think - that they will wear me down with the incessant insistence and eventually i will Just Do It.

but not today. today was different. today i said «no». felt pretty good at the time, but now all that slimey backwash is going to come out in monday's sip of work. ew!

heh.