back to back to work

Back from the mini-vacation and back to work which basically means back to headaches, deadlines, makukulit na internal clients.

Back to reality and reality bites back with a vengeance.

The first work day of November also marked the return to the office from a four-day respite. No one else but my boss is the happiest with the return of office work. Being a workaholic, he was pretty energetic and cheerful (enthusiastic even) about getting back to work.

No lesser than 10 emails from my irrepressible boss greeted me when I opened my office email account when I arrived. His enthusiasm for work and his drive usually rubs off on other people (you can tell because they start talking about work even during lunch hour and stay up for a few more minutes ... about 59 minutes more ... after their 8-hour shift is over). It even rubs off on me at times despite my nonchalant work attitude (a result of over 10 years work experience which had me experiencing the worst bosses, worst worst case decision-making scenarios, worst working with meager resources, the most stressful, nerve-wracking, time-deficient, and utterly impossible but you got to do it work situations which resulted in this present-day rather numb+cynical+seeming disinterested approach to dealing with anything remotely resembling work).

Juggling from one project to another can be a pain especially if the projects were of extremely extreme nature. How about juggling five or six at a time? But previous work experiences have trained me for that. The only thing that gets excited with me whenever work load piles up is my blood pressure and that's not because of excitement but because of the potential loss and lack of sleep, rest and adequate me-time.

Managing people is also not as easy as it seems. You got to deal with different people with differing traits, attitudes, idiosyncrasies, and opinions on what's good and what's not. While you may generally have an idea of where things are going, you also got to hear what your people have to say. The younger ones, they usually have good ideas, fresher ones than what you've got stored in the gray matter so it's good to listen. But then, you got to get the electrodes fired up to eat all the info and that, for someone who's approaching the mid-life, takes its toll -- literally, a brain drain.

You also got office politics to consider. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I got exposed to office politics early in my career and one fact is true: no matter how big or small the office or corporation, there is sure to be office politics. If you're a new guy in the neighborhood and you get hired right smack in the middle of a civil war, chances are the forces on left and right will try to steer you onto their side of the issue at hand.

And then there will always be office-mates you will hate. Or at least, won't be rubbing elbows with. That's natural. As they say, you can't please everybody and not everybody is pleasing to you especially if they are:

• quite full of themselves and generally believe they're the only persons God bequeathed with a brain

• ego-centric and believe they're the absolute center of the universe (I'm absolutely sure that the likes of Copernicus and Galileo have already proven that the sun is the center of the universe)

• quite unaware that there's an English word that is spelled i-m-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e and that it is associated with two things -- a) that that person is impossible, and that b) ideas always have to be grounded on 2 office realities of time and resources

Dealing with people you don't like is energy-draining because you have to psyche yourself up for those times when you need to interact with them. Of course, you will always need to have the benefit of the doubt about a person (back in college, one guy instantly got on my bad side because of his arrogant and cocky demeanor during the first days of class but later on, we hit it off and became friends, bandmates even), but then there's always that possibility that first impressions will remain permanent impressions especially if you prove those impressions to be true.

So while I am thankful that I have work (been a bum, been there, done that) and there are so many instances that work (from the first advertising copy I wrote more than ten years ago to the unfinished poker performance report I was doing last evening) has made me smile (Good work, Ram ... Great job on that, Ram ... Keep up the good work, Ram), work will always be accompanied by fatigue, energy and gray matter drain, pressure, deadlines, demanding internal clients, and sometimes even unexpected little rewards :)

Keep up the good work, guys.