what it is, what it do

once a month isn't so bad, eh?

so here i sit at my work desk. renewals to be quoted, shit to be logged, etc.

something odd has happened, though. i've become more invested in what i'm doing. it's like i'm racing myself to get these accounts out the door. and it feels good to end the day with a list of quoted accounts that extends further than the lists from days prior.

is deskjockey starting to fit?

oddly enough, i hope so. this life has felt a tick empty at various points. without the time to be an effective agent of the social changes i've come to support, i feel like i'm giving short shrift to my "out-of-work" life, and that my thoughts are consumed by the shifting political and cultural landscape surrounding queerdom tends to distract from the work tasks at hand.

additionally, i've noticed that my nagging ups and downs tend to correlate with work. if i feel buried or consumed, i'm anxious and depressed at home, social and athletic commitments falter, and i lose time to the snooze. one should not hit snooze 8 times in a morning, but i've doubled that on more than one occasion. friends help things a lot. friends with differing perspectives, friends with the same perspectives, and combinations thereof. however, i spend most of my life during the week at work. if i'm not happy here, that carries over. it's impossible to leave work "at work," to relegate my ambition and anxieties to an 8-5 box. there's a degree of reciprocity as well. sometimes, when things aren't going so well (or, really, when they are) in the life otherwise, work suffers.

now that i've assumed a modicum of real and tangible responsibility, the work doesn't seem so daunting to get through. business revolves around accommodating ambiguities, far more than i anticipated that it would. you've got to negotiate rates, work systems that often do not themselves work, adjust values, and make all number and manner of tweaks to the "standard workflows." no two accounts are similar, and you're always having to balance the known cost of attaining more information with the unknown cost of just not knowing. in previous roles, this has been the bane of my existence. now, i have come to relish the art of the requote. the more accommodations i make (or do not make) for an account, the more i come to understand the nuances of the trucking industry. it won't make me a hit at parties, but it's making me better at my job, and there's something to be said for that.

one phrase that's begun to resonate loudly within the echo chamber of my values is "bloom where you're planted." i may not always be where i want to be, or even where i can tolerate being for long. but ultimately, i'll derive far more value from those experiences into which i invest myself fully, regardless of whether i much enjoy them. glad to know that i'm getting closer to embodying this phrase and no longer rebelling against it.

and when the boredom/monotony/anger at the path i'm on get overwhelming, i'll just remember: "baby, we'll be fine. all we gotta do is be brave and be kind."