song covers and repetitive motion syndrome
so...
I'm at work doing my *damndest* to make a slow day into a productive day.
but oh... my... GOD. It's a brutal one.
Both of the people I'm relying on for this week's "project workflow" are running way behind. Which means that I have 50% less to do at the moment. In an economy that gives my current field about 60% less business.
I love being busy. I work hard to be busy when I'm not busy.
But today I'm dangerously close to stabbing my eyes out with thin-tipped sharpies from frustration.
I was doing ok until just now, when Johnny Cash's "Hurt" came on the podcast I listen to (radioparadise -- awesome. I even got those cloth grocery bags with 'radioparadise' on them to be a total dork and advertise good tunes. Because I live in Boulder! And I'm in my 20s! And I voted for Obama! And I'm a total stereotype that makes the polls cheer with glee!)
Then I realized that "Hurt" was acoustic, so I must be listening to NIN's cover of "Hurt". But Trent Reznor never started singing, so I had to save my script and flip over to iTunes and discover that it was some instrumental piece called "Remembrance Day" by 'God is an Astronaut'. It was the straw that broke the camel's back.
If you're going to totally plagiarize a song, don't plagiarize a cover OF a cover.
And if you're going to be all synth/instrumental band... don't have 'hearts of space' predictable names that include 'cosmos' or 'god' or 'astronaut' or any of those other 'new age' feels that makes me want to just fall over and die.
I shouldn't be doing this. But man, this work thing isn't working out. I'd leave my desk if I had to use the 'loo... and this is the only way I can symbolically leave my desk to release the unwanted thoughts out of my mind.
The economy is really fucking things up. I had a conversation last night with an ex-colleague who started crying in a coffee shop when he asked me to help him enter an international "job" contest that he will never, under any circumstances, win. This morning a friend emailed to say that she won't be visiting me in a few weeks from NYC because of the whole job/domino effect.
I'm feeling it too. After spending SO long and hard trying to find the next place to leap, jobs are disappearing like water in a drought. I've spent the last year and a half developing new market and video ideas for our company because I dislike so many of the titles that we make, and last week I was informed that they were *all* being cut. The only content we'll develop for a minimum of a year is strictly 'the most basic of the down and dirty basics' that we are known for.
I was given two options for my next video:
1. circumcision
2. a video for parents whose baby just died prenatally/in childbirth/shortly after birth
After that meeting, I did something I almost never do-- I went straight home, cracked open a beer. Stood by my window just watching the people in the park across the street and wondering how I can feel so grateful for a job, yet so freaking miserable about the prospect of watching genital mutilation or human loss for the next bachelorette, cooking-for-one year of my life.
Ironically, my current video is about "alcohol and pregnancy", so (as most women can sympathize with) on some level I'm constantly paranoid that my habits are damaging an imaginary baby that I don't know about.
(*the fetal alcohol syndrome video WAS slated for summer. Due to the economy, will not be released until December/Jan '10. Won't even be edited for months and months. And I can't even get revisions back from my boss. I have cleaned my entire desk and files-- 4 hrs of cleaning-- and gone through archived emails. Now am left anxious and twitchy at my desk, thinking about alcohol and circumcision and how much I hate this damn recession)
Ironically, my brain feels the same way that my right arm does-- I've spent so much time at this desk working overtime since last summer, I've developed an incredibly sore kink in my right bicep. I've switched the mouse over and now have to fumble around as a lefty, which results in my shoulders holding even more tension and getting more and more stiff as the work week goes on. The knot in my right arm is just as sore as it ever was.
AUGHHHHH!!!! Why do we do this? How did we get to this point?! Repetitive motion damage from desk jobs has to be the most soul-suckingly sad thing ever. The ergonomic literature makes it even worse... "try carving out 1-5 minutes for every two hours spent at a computer to look at something further away... such as out the window"
The Spaniard never walks down the hall. He speed-walks, if not runs, in big heavy footsteps that rattle the doorframe.
Boom, boom, boom, snatch something from the printer.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, get a glass of water, BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM back to his office.
At his desk, I often see him just staring off into space.
Now there's a metaphor for my day.
Hurry up!
And wait...
damn. I can't believe I'm writing this.
Back to alcohol research...
I'm at work doing my *damndest* to make a slow day into a productive day.
but oh... my... GOD. It's a brutal one.
Both of the people I'm relying on for this week's "project workflow" are running way behind. Which means that I have 50% less to do at the moment. In an economy that gives my current field about 60% less business.
I love being busy. I work hard to be busy when I'm not busy.
But today I'm dangerously close to stabbing my eyes out with thin-tipped sharpies from frustration.
I was doing ok until just now, when Johnny Cash's "Hurt" came on the podcast I listen to (radioparadise -- awesome. I even got those cloth grocery bags with 'radioparadise' on them to be a total dork and advertise good tunes. Because I live in Boulder! And I'm in my 20s! And I voted for Obama! And I'm a total stereotype that makes the polls cheer with glee!)
Then I realized that "Hurt" was acoustic, so I must be listening to NIN's cover of "Hurt". But Trent Reznor never started singing, so I had to save my script and flip over to iTunes and discover that it was some instrumental piece called "Remembrance Day" by 'God is an Astronaut'. It was the straw that broke the camel's back.
If you're going to totally plagiarize a song, don't plagiarize a cover OF a cover.
And if you're going to be all synth/instrumental band... don't have 'hearts of space' predictable names that include 'cosmos' or 'god' or 'astronaut' or any of those other 'new age' feels that makes me want to just fall over and die.
I shouldn't be doing this. But man, this work thing isn't working out. I'd leave my desk if I had to use the 'loo... and this is the only way I can symbolically leave my desk to release the unwanted thoughts out of my mind.
The economy is really fucking things up. I had a conversation last night with an ex-colleague who started crying in a coffee shop when he asked me to help him enter an international "job" contest that he will never, under any circumstances, win. This morning a friend emailed to say that she won't be visiting me in a few weeks from NYC because of the whole job/domino effect.
I'm feeling it too. After spending SO long and hard trying to find the next place to leap, jobs are disappearing like water in a drought. I've spent the last year and a half developing new market and video ideas for our company because I dislike so many of the titles that we make, and last week I was informed that they were *all* being cut. The only content we'll develop for a minimum of a year is strictly 'the most basic of the down and dirty basics' that we are known for.
I was given two options for my next video:
1. circumcision
2. a video for parents whose baby just died prenatally/in childbirth/shortly after birth
After that meeting, I did something I almost never do-- I went straight home, cracked open a beer. Stood by my window just watching the people in the park across the street and wondering how I can feel so grateful for a job, yet so freaking miserable about the prospect of watching genital mutilation or human loss for the next bachelorette, cooking-for-one year of my life.
Ironically, my current video is about "alcohol and pregnancy", so (as most women can sympathize with) on some level I'm constantly paranoid that my habits are damaging an imaginary baby that I don't know about.
(*the fetal alcohol syndrome video WAS slated for summer. Due to the economy, will not be released until December/Jan '10. Won't even be edited for months and months. And I can't even get revisions back from my boss. I have cleaned my entire desk and files-- 4 hrs of cleaning-- and gone through archived emails. Now am left anxious and twitchy at my desk, thinking about alcohol and circumcision and how much I hate this damn recession)
Ironically, my brain feels the same way that my right arm does-- I've spent so much time at this desk working overtime since last summer, I've developed an incredibly sore kink in my right bicep. I've switched the mouse over and now have to fumble around as a lefty, which results in my shoulders holding even more tension and getting more and more stiff as the work week goes on. The knot in my right arm is just as sore as it ever was.
AUGHHHHH!!!! Why do we do this? How did we get to this point?! Repetitive motion damage from desk jobs has to be the most soul-suckingly sad thing ever. The ergonomic literature makes it even worse... "try carving out 1-5 minutes for every two hours spent at a computer to look at something further away... such as out the window"
The Spaniard never walks down the hall. He speed-walks, if not runs, in big heavy footsteps that rattle the doorframe.
Boom, boom, boom, snatch something from the printer.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, get a glass of water, BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM back to his office.
At his desk, I often see him just staring off into space.
Now there's a metaphor for my day.
Hurry up!
And wait...
damn. I can't believe I'm writing this.
Back to alcohol research...
posted by JustJane at
2:26 PM
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