Don't let BUSINESS interfere with WORK.
Don't Let Business Interfere With Workentry,
I'm living in parallel universes. Or maybe I'm living parallel lives, and the things I'm doing have universal import. Possibly (I'm willing to concede the point), I'm merely having a juxtaposition-induced epiphany, and its import is merely global.
In Day-Job land I've been wrangling through office-politics in the wake of our last reorganization. Things are finally straightening themselves out to the point that I've been able to look around and realize that while I've been immersing myself in business considerations, actual work has been piling up and is awaiting my attention.
This wouldn't be so bad if there weren't five million dollars worth of engineering resources sitting in a holding pattern waiting on my work. And in truth, they're in a pretty productive holding pattern. Still, when I looked around and realized that I'd been stressing over business at the expense of getting actual work done, I penned the above subject line.
Then I looked around at WebComic Land. The 'Con, a quick mailing-list flame war, and numerous business-level contacts had captured my attention, as well as most of my time for the last three weeks. Today I sat down and cranked out three strips, only to discover that brings the buffer all the way up to 14 (a dismally LOW number).
In short, business was getting in the way of work (or in this case, dream-work).
The statement "Don't let BUSINESS interfere with WORK" gained a lot more weight when I realized that it applied to all the activities I was involved in.
Just now I realized that when I was doing record production I was doing it at the expense of music composition. In that case I let business completely kill work, and I've since left the music industry entirely.
Don't let BUSINESS interfere with WORK.
Maybe it's worthy of its own meme. Maybe it's never been said this succinctly before. Maybe I'm just growing up enough to recognize the flaws in the way I manage my time. Regardless, I feel strongly enough about the that statement that I've printed it up and stuck it to my computer.
Okay, enough business. I've got work to do.