Hello I'm Rich Brown and this is my personal website and blog. I'm just your simple, average, down to earth, professional, out gay man and aspiring circuit boy, living in Phoenix, Arizona with a few things to say while trying to find my place among all the scary, conservative, religious nuts in this sick and twisted world.
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
@WORK. I had to take a second to laugh to myself this morning on the walk into the office. I saw something that I had not seen in a very long time... A middle aged man carrying a briefcase with him into the office. Not that it really occurred to me before but I just assume that everyone in the business world now has laptops and the laptop bag is basically the briefcase of the digital age. I suppose I should mention that this man also had a laptop bag over his shoulder, so the question in my mind was ... "Why bother to carry the briefcase?" Ugh, I'm sitting on probably one of the most boring conference calls of my life. I was a bit irritated today when I received an email stating that I needed to join this meeting. I hate not having any advance notice of meetings when clearly people on my team were well aware of them in advance. Also I remember why I've been working from home now. Being that this is my first day back in the office since last Tuesday, I almost forgot how annoying it was to sit out here on the floor with the sales people around me. I have a guy next to me playing his disco music, the woman in front of me and the guy behind me are both loud enough on the phone for the entire 2nd floor to hear their conversations, and then on the other side of me I have people who find it necessary to take every call on the speakerphone. I can just feel my bloodpressure rising when everyone starts talking and I can't concentrate. Sometimes I just feel like I should stand up and start screaming "SHUT THE HELL UP". I doubt that would do anything though. I think that's the only reason I haven't done it yet.
I've been thinking a lot about my career lately. I wish the economy wasn't still so much in the toilet because I probably would not sitting here. I think the only plus of this job is that it's close to home, I have a little bit of flexibility and I don't have to travel. Otherwise the work sucks, the money sucks and once again as I said years ago I hate working for a company where technology is not their primary focus. I do feel that I have been learning a great deal about database programming over the past few months, however this is really not where I want to focus my learning or career. I don't know ... every day I think about maybe looking for another job, or even going back to consulting work. I have a few more things to consider now, but I'm just sick of not having any money. I know that I don't really want to travel like I was doing, however I have to look at all the positions and I wonder if having no money but staying home outweighs having money but never being home. I suppose if I was happy doing what I'm doing and making no money and staying home, well then that would be a different story. But when you are working in a job you hate, a job were you don't get paid well, and it's only redeeming value is that it's flexible ... well is that really worth it in the long run? I guess that is the question I really have to answer before I can make any decisions.
