Wednesday night; working… at home… on work stuff. Management is hard. Although, I can totally see how, from the outside looking in, it would appear cushy and lazy. There’s not a lot of concrete results to be had by a manager, rather the sum of the concrete results of those they manage. So, management is hard. I’m really trying to get back into the caring-about-work phase, despite Lil’ Chino’s looming arrival. I did, however, finally communicate that I’m not bending to the tremendous pressure, being placed on me by my management, to do some traveling in mid-March. Only two weeks from the projected due-date, and I’d be gone for a week. Sharaun, predictably, puked all over the idea – and my initial attempts to back out were met with more pressure. However, today I just laid it bare and said “no.” Really, it doesn’t make sense: My first baby, two weeks old, and I leave my just-gave-birth wife alone to care for her? No, sorry, not gonna do it – the world of work won’t stop turning if I’m not up in front of the customer.
You may have noticed the apparent lack of focus last week that caused me to slip and miss two consecutive week-ending days. Oh, and yesterday too. It’s true, I’ve been cheating on the evening blogging routine with a number of things: running, iPod fiddling, and, God forbid, work. Yeah, I’ve picked up that old torch of working during the evenings again – things are really getting hot and heavy, and my “duck it all until the baby comes” strategy is clearly flawed. So, I chose to react, to step up and try and kick ass in the little time I have left. It may sound lame to refer to what I do as “kicking ass,” as there’s not much that sitting getting fatter in front of a monitor and winning a fight have in common – but in my cubicle-dominant world, that’s how we do it. Y’know, like tax bitches do six 1040s in one day – that’s kicking some tax-ass. Me, answering 100 e-mails and attending five meetings – that’s kicking some what-I-do-ass.
In preparing the baby’s room, it struck me last night how “modernized” the process is these days: We got our rocker off Craigslist, our custom-painted letters spelling K-E-A-T-O-N off Ebay, ordered the bedding on the internet, and manage our gift registry in cyberspace also. I swear, Lil’ Chino’s gonna come out watching the latest episode of Diggnation on her PSP (OK, that sounds super-relevant now, but won’t make a damn but of sense in a year). Speaking of “preparing” for the baby… getting a baby means an absolute explosion of “stuff.” We’ve got all kinds of stuff, piled all over the house. I swear, we have enough to fill, like… a whole other room, a baby’s room… even.
Downloaded an album by an outfit called I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness the other night, on name alone. Turns out, they are pretty dang good. Kinda melancholy and a little bit same-sounding throughout, but I like the plodding feel of the songs a lot. Also in music, I found this recent post over at stereogum hilarious – I don’t know quite why, but it really epitomizes a common feeling amongst the greedy hipsters who covet “good” bands. Oh, and, even if this Coachella 2006 poster was a fake – it seems the rumors about the Pumpkins getting together to gig this summer may indeed be true. Being that I was completely infatuated with the Pumpkins once upon a time, I’d love to go seem ’em again for old times sake.
Goodnight.
Also written on this day...
- firsts - 2021
- providence is something - 2011
- i should be able to pull it off - 2010
- undaunted - 2009
- hate and bass - 2005
- leave your ostrich with my trained-monkey valet - 2004