Well, four and a half hours until vacation, and my mind is deliciously blank.
I could of course put pressure upon myself to write something witty, urbane, provocative, or any combination, thereof, but hey, it’s October. The time for high pressure is at an end, baby. 'Cos I say so. My and my smooth, seven inches from the mid-day sun writing style gonna coast today. I don’t wanna work. I just wanna bang on the keys all day.
(And let’s also take a moment to recognize that now, finally, at last, Norway can watch Steven Segal movies. You were strong, Norway, and now your rewards are just and plentiful.)
Glenn Reynolds has a great, succinct description of what blogging is. I like this because it summarizes why I blog the way I do---I talk about what I like, when I like, and without it becoming a burden. The best blogs, heck, the best writing, comes from this very notion. It’s not the final word, but it is OUR word. For better and for worse.
There’s of course a tendency in the insular world of blogging to raise its value too high or too low. Sort of a cosine curve of quality going on there, when the truth really lies in the median values. It’s neither as valuable as bloggers might think, but it’s far more powerful than major media will allow. The precise value is a big muddled, but certainly, visibility of blogs is only going to rise. How quality control fits into that, I don’t know. Luckily, I just talk about chicks and beer and stuff, so no one’s ever gonna accuse me of quality.
“Quality” is a funny word, anyways. “Dude, that is quality!” is about the only phrase I can hear with that word that does not send me into a convulsion. Mostly because the contrast of “dude” and “quality” makes me giggle. Well, not giggle, but more like a…you know what? I’m getting off track. One of my favorite jokes growing up was coined by my brother who, in driving past a local mall, would always shout out, “Welcome to K-Mart, where the K stands for Quality!” Pretty appropriate, I think, and relatable to anyone who, say, has a job.
I mean, really, how does anything get done? Ever think about it? How many people in your everyday work shift somehow prevent you from getting something done? Enough to make you think, at the end of the week, at the bar, nursing your Scotch and Mountain Dew, wishing that girl over there would just look at you, you know, while you’re trying to impress her with your peanut throwing skills, “Man, a lot of people just seemed hell-bent on making sure I couldn’t get anything done.”
And that’s why they call it “work”. Because it takes work to get any of it done. The name indicates the meaning. For some of us, those hours spent in a cubicle consist of work. And we work to get the enemy to give up what we want. The enemy can be in the next cubicle, the next country, or in another country. But make no mistake about it, they are the enemy. And they have work to do, as well. But their work consists of shirking responsibility while laying the deadline smackdown on your ass. They are the one who invented the asinine phrase, “The customer is always right.” They invented bureaucracy in order to make sure they had company approval to not actually do anything. They expend an incredible amount of energy in order to walk around and be able to complain how they have no time to do anything…and then leave at 5 while you’re still working to make their deadline that’s important, really, it is, and thanks so much for putting in all the good work!
Newton would be completely confused by the modern workplace. Conservation of energy does not exist in a conference call.
My theory is this: about half of any “work” force is doing work at any time. 95% of their time is spent chasing after 49.999% of the people who are at a physical place of work but not actually working. That leaves about 18 people who busting their ass to make sure we’re not still in caves.
We need a holiday for those people. Oh wait, they can’t take a holiday, they are probably too busy.
And that’s why people like Glenn want to maintain that blogging (or writing, in general) continue to be anything BUT work for us. We without trust funds need our little escapes from the World of Work. The minute I start sweating over a blank page in MS Word is the minute I hit the snack bar like Ike Turner hit Tina. Believe me, you don’t wanna read my work. Wouldn’t wish that upon anyone.
(Part of me wants to edit the Ike reference, but hey, that would be work. That’s no good.)
Income is necessary, no diggity, no doubt. But a little time spent on what we really love, well, that’s even more necessary, at times. Occasionally the necessity and the desire overlap, and those are fortunate times for fortunate people. In the meantime, though, the rest of seek what refuge we can, when we can. Usually, that’s enough. Makes the other hours seem like less…well, work.
Speaking of which, lunch hour's over. See y'all in NYC.
Posted by Ryan McGee at October 01, 2003 01:00 PM