Japanse New-Girl Monkey Network
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Thus ends the era when I got to wake up when was comfortable and I felt rested and managed my own hours. Like a litttle child, I was smacked on the hand and privileges were taken away because of the perception that, in general, they were being abused by my department. "Flex hours," apparently, in this company, does not mean you schedule your own work. It means that you have to be around during business hours every day, at a regular time, but with some exceptions for doctor's appointments and other events. Apparently, even though you get a reasonable amount of work done, and make sure that you work at least 40 hours a week, and you have worked long hours to the point that you caught a virus which put you in the hospital; apparently, even if that's true, if you come in between 9 and 10 and work an 8 hour day, you are "unprofessional" and not around enough.
Well, fine. I'll just be a zombie all day at work. It's not like I'm getting more and more excited about leaving anyway.
But enough griping. I think I'm just cranky and incoherent right now anyway. Some people think that getting up early is a matter of discipline. That may be true for some. I am a person who, even as a child, would not wake up early for Christmas morning. I will get up early for plane trips or other urgent events if I have to, but usually need to be aided by another human being, or at least very loud radio music and prolific quantities of coffee. Getting up early on a regular basis, however, seems more like a challenge of overcoming biology.
I don't have anything philosophical against being a "morning person." Getting up early can be nice. It's certainly more quiet and peaceful in the early hours. The fact of the matter is, though, that even if I go to bed early, and should naturally wake up after about 8 hours of sleep, I don't. Sometimes even an alarm doesn't help, because I turn it off in my sleep. Sometimes even putting the alarm far away from the bed doesn't work, because I get up, turn off the alarm, and fall back asleep.
Right now, after having got up at a tardy 7:30 (helped by a phone call from Mr Wiggins), I feel as if I could take a nap instantly. My brain feels as fuzzy as it did when I first woke up. Several times I found myself staring intently at the wall with my eyes out of focus. It's not that I don't want to get up early. It's that I simply don't function well when I do.
But I guess I should buck up, because professional people keep business hours. It's not about being efficient or focusing on my personal strengths and working with and around my weaknesses. Because I'm not an individual, here, not even in this small company with less than a hundred employees. I'm a Worker. I am here to provide work and bend under the patriarchal thumb of my management. I am not to be trusted, I am to be treated with condescension.
Did I say I was through griping? See, I told you I wasn't to be trusted.
{ link me }Blogfilial Piety
So. Mike Golby. And family. As usual I come into the conversation late, with nothing particularly profound to say and with ideas that others have already exrpessed much more eloquently.
Mike, all I have to say is that I'm glad most of my relatives don't even seem to be interested in the web, much less blogging. That said, I do self-censor with the idea in mind that some of these people may be reading what I write, and to, even if for a split second, consider their feelings as I write (and proofread-- does anybody else proofread their entries five times over?). I do know my dad in particular likes to read my blog. That said, if he or any relative emailed me telling me they had a violent difference of opinion about some content in my blog not specifically related to them, and therefore I should fundamentally change the way I write-- I would have to say, "I'm sorry, but I won't do that."
Families aren't about thought control. Unfortunately, a lot of the time we think they are. Sometimes we just care so much about family members that we want them to behave and believe certain ways because we think it will be better for them. Sometimes we are just being manipulative and petty. In families, we see a strange connection, we have a bond, we have something to relate to, because of genetics, familiarity, social pressure, love, whatever. When this happens, the line between "me" and "thee" blurs. There doesn't even have to be a strong emotional bond for this mindset to occur. It happens in the obvious example of parents living vicariously through their kids, wishing victories and successes on their offspring so intently that they force them down the poor, unsuspecting childrens' throats. It happens with more distant connections, this idea that if one is related to an undesirable, that undesirableness somehow can rub off on one.
Ultimately, though, we are in reality separate minds, we are divisible, alone. At the end of the day, we must be true to our convictions (as long as we know what those convictions are). We don't owe anything to our families for the circumstances that caused us to share their DNA. We owe them respect and love and forgiveness as they have shown us the same. And we give them respect and love when they haven't out of grace, not duty. My parents have shown me an example of a family where the heirarchy has been flattened. Yes, they had authority over me when I was younger, because I needed to learn how to take care of myself. But even when they were exercising that authority, they never took away my right to express myself (although sometimes they offered helpful suggestions on how to express myself less destructively, as I had a tendency to break things when frustrated).
Blogging can accentuate our separateness. Of course we interact with other bloggers, even meet them in person on occasion. Of course we respond to ideas that trigger our interest from the outside world. But when we sit down to type our entry, it's only our brain that moves our fingers across the keyboard. What we post may be public, but it belongs only to us. If we find those that are close to us stepping into our blog entries and making significant changes, changes that are fundamentally opposed to who we are, I think it's time to recommend those near and dear ones return to their own minds and start speaking only for themselves.
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