Balance thoughts, and work

[resonant]

My temp job only exists because technology is at a stage of incomplete integration.

Basically, every day this national company generates hundreds, thousands of documents on paper, which are scanned and sent to my department, where six people spend all day every day attaching them to the appropriate files in the database and marking them with the appropriate tags.

Seriously. I mean, some of these documents clearly originated on a computer somewhere and then were printed, scanned, and sent to my department. Apparently, at this point in the technological development curve, tagging and indexing them is something only a human being can do.

As a person who likes to smooth processes, it drives me crazy. If I can back up from what ought to be and only focus on what is, it's kind of satisfying, like a good game of solitaire, though I imagine that once I know what I'm doing, it will be about as interesting as eight hours a day of solitaire.

I haven't worked full-time for ten years, and I was very, very spoiled. I had forgotten having to take time off to get a haircut or go to the bank. I had also forgotten lunch hours, though, and those are glorious.

Today my yoga instructor was talking about balance, and she mentioned "balancing your efforts with your goals." I'm feeling frazzled and exhausted, and this was something I really needed to hear.

So on Saturday I've decided to do some thinking, maybe journaling, on how to make sure my energy is being directed at things that really matter to me.

And, given that I'm the only person in the family working, and thus I have to have this job until I can find a better one, I need to look at it and find something in it (other than the paycheck) that I can make use of.

Comments

[libitina]

6 People's full time salary might still cost less than a MarkLogic semantic tagging thingy

[resonant]

Plus the salaries of the people who would have to set everything up, I guess, and then persuading everyone involved in the system to enter things digitally instead of -- not even joking -- scanning a page full of notes handwritten on notebook paper and writing in the upper right-hand corner, "Account # _______, pls file under Correspondence."

[lexin]

The thing that gets me sometimes about my job is the loons who send in correspondence in the form of a PDF that's been scanned in (so you can't do a copypasta of the contents) rather than sending us the original file in Word format. What's with that shit? Do they laugh while thinking of civil servants sat there retyping their words so it can be used in a different format?

[resonant]

Or are they so technically inept that all they can do is follow a certain set of instructions? "6. Print the document. 7. Send a scan of the print to Department X."

[cesperanza]

My husband's firm centrally prints out and distributes email to the attorneys. PRINTS AND DISTRIBUTES EMAIL.

[elizabeth_rice]

OMG :D

[resonant]

Do any of them fax back a return receipt? Or maybe involve carrier pigeons?

[elizabeth_rice]

"balancing your efforts with your goals."
Good thought.

[resonant]

Not easy -- I tend to do what's on fire, rather than what really matters.