darkholme

quiet time

I'm sitting here in the office at 8.20am in the morning typing this post. For those that don't already know, I usually get into the office at approximately 8am every morning. I know what a lot of you are thinking - "8am? Are you insane? Why do you go into work so early?". Well, it's mainly because I can get a lift from my dad who can drop me off at work, but only if we leave the house at 7.30am. What I just realised is that for over a year already, I've been mostly starting my work days at 8am.

I actually don't quite mind the early start. When I get into the office it's usually empty, unless someone has stayed overnight to get work done. I like the quietness of the office early in the morning. Much quieter than when the phone starts ringing and clients start complaining. Much quieter than when my colleagues get in and start playing music on the radio or make noise playing foosball. Less distractions as compared to when my bosses come in and start handing out work or having meetings with me.

It's a nice time to just sit, go through my mail, organise my day, sometimes just close my eyes and relax for a little while. That's why sometimes when the clock reaches 8.50am, I get a little disappointed and want the day not to start.

The quiet time also does give me an opportunity to think, which is very rare nowadays. Nowadays it's more about getting the work done, trying to meet deadlines and dealing with clients/production team.

I spent about an hour last night talking to Gail, who used to work in my company but now has moved on to another company (originally, I wrote 'moved on to another place' but that sounded too morbid). We were talking about the company that I'm currently in and what problems we have. I know that it's a combination of not a great working environment and also the type of work that I'm doing that's getting me down alot of the time.

When Daphne asks me why I am still in this job, I go quiet. Primarily because I'm angry with myself. Why am I angry with myself? I am angry with myself because I know that I can do better, I am lazy to move on, I'm scared to move on, and there was a point in time where I felt like I couldn't let my colleagues down. The last point, of course, is extremely self-centred - like they couldn't get on without me. Which is bollocks if you think about it. Before I was around, they got on ok, maybe processes were a bit different then.

I really don't know whether or not this current structure/job scope works. It just seems that we're getting into messes and getting out of messes all the time. Sometimes, work goes out because it has to go out and I am sometimes not proud of the work that we've created.

I was telling Gail and I've told my bosses before, there is no pride in the work that we do. It seems as if we're a production house, a sweat shop where creativity is severely lacking and we just churn out work that just passes from 'unacceptable' to 'acceptable'. Not even 'good' or 'award-winning'. In that sense, I guess that I'm quite ambitious.

However, I still feel that it's a lack of ownership and pride in the work that's killing us. It's one particular client in particular that has sort of drained the creativity in the design/multimedia side.

The other thing that I'm thinking about is "What do I really want in life?". Do I want to continue in this role as an account servicing person but in a different company? Or should I move on and take a stab at being on the client side or the creative side.

I need to feel challenged but not in the role that I'm in right now. I would love to do more design. More programming. I think that I might do well in programming, cos as some of my colleagues will testify, I'm the most detailed (or kiasu) user tester. I can find bugs where no one can find bugs. So finding bugs are part of the programming experience.

I'm glad for these quiet times in the office. It's 9am right now. I'm going off to do work. *sigh*

posted by kelvin @ 8:14 am