motherboard overload

There have been no blog posts here for more than a week.  It’s been on my mind to write something, but it seems that when the going gets tough, the will to put out any unnecessary communication stops.  My job is killing me these past weeks.  Not only am I trying to keep up with all the ongoing projects, I’m under the gun (so to speak) to get databases migrated to new servers, update all my asset policy statements, assist unwilling people to complete security reviews, AND…to top that off…on Monday this week, a lady walked into our area of the building and announced “You folks all need to vacate your cubes by May 1 – we are beginning a remodel project.” 

Lovely.  So then we all scramble to find a place to move into.  Fortunately, there are some empty cubes around the floor.  When people leave the company, their jobs are filled at corporate headquarters.  I selected a cube with a window overlooking the front parking lot – at least there’s a window for my plants to get some natural light.  The cube was piled with boxes and broken equipment, all dusty and dirty.  I hauled most of it over to another junked-up cube, wiped everything off with sanitizing wipes, and started the arduous process of packing and moving my stuff.  In spite of all that’s going on, I’m about 40% moved.  Hooray!

So, the constant badgering and stress that is my job all day long, causes me to appreciate when I can take my kayak out on a lake and get away from all of humankind and civilization.  Even if only for less than two hours, the deafening silence is sheer delight.  I am a completely different creature out alone on the water – it’s just me in this time and place, with nobody demanding anything from me.  It’s an amazing freedom.

A day in the office makes me feel like a machine…sort of a robot with multiprocessors that multitask under control of an automated task scheduling system.  It must be that I’ve been working this job for so long that even nonroutine things can be handled without my direct attention.  It’s not uncommon for me to be working on two or three issues while carrying on a couple of instant message conversations while reading/replying to emails while talking on the phone while watching a Webcast presentation.  Today things got really hectic and I had the thought that if I just added a third monitor, my life would be easier.  Ridiculous thought! 

It must be that people who work with computers all day long take on the characteristics of machines.  Perhaps electrons are absorbed by our fingers and travel into our brains through our central nervous systems where they are absorbed by brain cells and morph our cranial DNA.  My double helices that were once enzymes and proteins have transformed into digitized long single strands of binary fiber.  After I’m dead, no doubt an autopsy will reveal that a power surge fried my motherboard.