I am many things but consistent is not one of them. I have the most sincere intentions, I make plans, lots of them & frequently -because I like change- but I don't follow through. at least not in useful stuff. In a sense I am consistent in not sticking with anything.
One of my other great qualities is the tendency to get bored with things that don't seem perfect, which is everything. The early-onset boredom may be the cause of inconsistent behavior.
It's been 10 LONG years since I left my home & family, plucked all my roots, lost many fragile branches and came to this faraway land. 10 years is way too long to discover and understand this land. But I had to do time to get the golden pass to the rest of the world. Now that I have it, I can't wait to get away, to see what else is out there, what else can annoy me, shock me & maybe even splendidly surprise me. I'm running out of everything that sane people get through life with. After all, you can't do the same things & expect a different outcome. I WANT a different outcome. The current outcome is nothing to write home about.
So in the spirit of uprooting and severing ties, I'm culling. I started in November when I moved desks, scanning & recycling all paper documents at work, switching to strictly electronic notes. Today, I'm going through the A5 diaries I kept every year of working at my current office. It started with the ridiculous "PLAN YOUR DAY" notebook which I quickly realized was TOO MUCH for someone like me. As my first assignment, I was to assess the portfolio of all ATM units of a certain bank across the country to confirm their safety in the event of an earthquake. The classic sort of repetitive work we give newbies when we are still figuring them out -or which no one else wanted to do. There! That's my plan for the day, or the week in fact. So I had quickly crossed out the "DAY" in the page titles and written "month". I was impressively consistent with keeping that To DO list for a long time. The next diary showed endless days of work on jobs the details of which I have forgotten almost entirely. It's sad looking back at my confused notes, my attempts at keeping my shit together, numerous scheduled meeting, names of people I was terrified of, people I soon got over, people I still work with. I was clueless in the least attractive sort of way. When you have a PhD, it can either work as a charm that awes or a Scarlet letter that just worsens your already embarrassing circumstances; You don't know how to write a report? You don't know how to book a car for a site visit? You don't know what loads to apply for the analysis? what was your PhD on again?!
Occasionally there was the hopeful entry about the kick-off meeting of that amazing project I worked on which was the peak of my career & sadly still is, 3 years later. Or in fact any kick-off meeting for any new job. All beginnings seemed hopeful, clean.
I switched around the office, changed teams, was put on different jobs, was given haphazard tasks. No one knew what to do with me. I didn't know what to do with me. & I meddled, always asking what's next, anxious for something more interesting, something I hadn't done before. So five A5 diaries later, I'm back to square one. I changed my team 5 months ago & am planning to leave the team -or even the company- in 8 months. I don't stick around long enough to win or... fail.
Comments