On the art of being a dumbass...

So yeah, rule number one for anyone who isn't 5 years old at work is not to send sarcastic bitchy remarks about someone or some organisation to someone else, and then helpfully forward their reply back to the organisation in question without remembering to remove the sarcastic, bitchy comment about their general uselessness.  When one does not do this, many aggrieved emails have a tendency to fly above one's head to one's manager and sundry other managers involved, interested or generally in the same postcode, which then requires that one sends an apology email ("no, I didn't really mean to say that you are a useless piece of crap, I was in a moment of stress, my dog died, the planets were misaligned, I was way out of order, and boy was I a silly dumbass to forward you the comment in the first place").  One then has to have a boring meeting about one's professionalism (where one spends the whole time thinking, well at least I said what I and everyone else thinks), and then one dreads the next meeting one has to have with said stupid organisation, as it will be uncomfortable and one might have to listen to how the email was upsetting, misleading and offensive, all the while pretending like one really didn't mean to say all that, when in actuality one did (though one is glad one didn't say words like poopy or fart or mention any specific names).  This is all highly theoretical of course.  I read this in a book, which I then promptly burned and forgot.

Eh?

Sigh.

So it's been back to work, and back to thinking, what the hell am I doing with my life and in this place.  Two and a half weeks of complete and total (and, as it turns out very damn expensive) freedom kind of comes crashing down in a big pile of poo.  I think I have been going about my job searching all wrong - I'm not quite sure how I've been doing it wrong, but as I've been entirely unsuccessful, that could be my first indication that something has been amiss.  I'm trying to open up my mind to other types of jobs in other areas, to not try to stick to GIS, per se, as that search has been entirely fruitless.  Trying to think about what skills, in a very general sort of way, do I have - what do I like to do.  How can I get an interesting, well paying job without having to pay for more education, which just isn't going to happen.  Speaking of education, I didn't get the fellowship.  I don't know why - they still haven't responded to my request for feedback.  That did kind of feel like my ticket out of my current rut though, and it didn't happen.  And, honestly, I feel pretty deflated about it.  Yeah, I meant everything I said in my bitchy sentence in my informal email.  I meant all of it.  I'm tired of pinheaded little people who will only do what is requested of them through the chain of command - the deadweight bureaucratic heirarchy of more than my job's worth did you fill in the proper form for this load of crap.  I am in completely the wrong environment, drowning just a little bit more each day in forms and paperwork.  I must get out, but I don't know how.  It's sort of like a big, impersonal, aspiration eating plant, local government - it all seems so comfortable and stable, so predictable, and then you slip in, years pass, and your realise, oh my god, I don't have a clue how to get out.  I could be come a lifer, stuck at the top of my puny little paygrade until the end of time, content in my little corner of Middle England.  Yep, need to get out - but first need to figure out how...

Oh, speaking of poo, on a lighter note, one of my work colleagues has this large peace lily next to his desk, in a pot, in a white terracotta thingie.  I noticed that the peace lily was suddenly turning yellow, so I thought, hmm, time to transplant.  So, I went out at lunch today and bought a pot at the supercraptastic hardware store that never has anything other than paint and mops.  I brought the pot back and decided to get started (as we have a bag of soil in the office from a previous plant adventure).  First step - lift the pot out of the terracotta thingie.  Well, it turns out that work colleague had been pretty religious about watering the plant.  In fact, he had been so religious that the plant was actually sitting about 4 inches of what turned out to be extradordinarily foul smelling, rotting and very hot water, which somehow had been sealed off from the air (and from our noses) by the side of the pot.  Quite a lot of this water gushed out onto the windowsill, the floor and work colleague's football shoes, and the smell, oh the smell.  The entire floor of the office building smelled like, well, like a brontosaurus had simultaneously pooped and expired into a fetid swamp (pretty sure it was a brontosaurus).  Work colleague wasn't entirely pleased about this little stinky turn of events, but, as I pointed out, it was actually his own damn fault for watering the plant every day and drowning it!  Anyway, that did provide for 15 or so minutes of amusement at lunchtime (and probably helped with a number of people's diets as well). :-)

Yep, back to normal.