Another Day of Surviving

The day I made my last post, I had only worked a small portion of my day and spent the rest participating in such thrilling events as playing with a ball and staring at a wall. It was sad to know that it wasn’t my most unproductive day, for it was merely foreshadowing today. For today, I…. Have…. Done…. NOTHING.

Let me back up a step and explain a simple truth about my job as a consultant. All of my time is spent working for other companies. I don’t make anything to sell to customers, I provide a service to clients. This service takes time out of my day and therefore it is best to charge these clients money for every hour I spend working to provide the service they require. Simply put, I sell my time to other companies. What does this mean? Time is very important! I must keep track of every minute of my day, so I know which minutes to charge to which clients. The more time I spend working for clients, the more money my company makes. Guess what??? Posting in my blog is not considered chargeable time, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.

I keep a daily calendar next to me to keep track of my chargeable time which must be posted at the end of everyday. Today, my page is blank. I have had nothing to do, and can’t think of anything to do. I am back to playing with a ball and starring at the wall. I have also read some scripture and posted in my blog. I guess the day hasn’t been completely wasted. As you can see, I am clearly a bored man.

Question: What do you do when you have 8 hours of nothing to do, but are confined to a 3 walled cubical? People often walk by, so I can’t get away with playing a game.

For a while I filled my time creating really cool spreadsheets to keep track of things in my life such as my running times, personal finances, and poker statistics. I also created a sheet that counts down the years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds from now to a specific time in the future. It also counts up in the same way from a moment in the past. I enjoy plugging in the minute of my birth and watching my life tick away. That may seem a bit melancholy, but it is a visual representation of what my work life does to me. Sometimes it inspires me.

Why do I feel that I am merely surviving life? The simple answer is because days like today when I watch my life tick away because I have nothing to do at work. That certainly isn’t living life! To make the answer more complex and more justifiable, even when I have work to do, it is in no way fulfilling. Why is it not fulfilling??
1. Since I am always working for other companies, I feel no sense of dedication to my own.
2. I never complete an entire project, but work on a portion of it, so I feel little satisfaction in seeing a project completed.
3. I mostly work off of templates leaving little project creativity.
4. I do some crappy jobs that people above me pass off because they don’t want to do it.

Since I am not fulfilled in my job, I have little motivation to do my job. Most of the time, I do just enough work to get by without getting fired, this is reminiscent of my days of school. This is also the #1 reason why I am surviving life and not living life. It is clear that I need a solution to this. The good news is, I may have found one! Details of that will be provided in the next couple days.