Friday, January 22, 2010

Positive pressure

I came home early tonight, 7 being relatively early for Japan.

My work schedule last year in was just damn busy and I honestly needed a break. I had 2 weeks of during the winter and I cane back to work on the 5th of this month and I still don't really feel like working that hard. Nope, none of those 4 hours over time everyday kind of schedule. I just want to see the clock hit 5:30 and work a little bit more and then head home to rest.

And I have been in this resting mode for the last few weeks. Nothing particularly productive being done, but just doing some occasional studying, programming and watching a hell of a lot of The West Wing, which is a series about really busy people running the White House, which I find is really ironic for a guy like me.

Right now, I don't have any real motivation at the moment. The work just doesn't stop flowing and there is alwys some issue that needs to be dealt with; welcome to the world of R&D. As much as the end result of the project is going to be sexy, the process it self is very far from it, and I hate boring work. I wonder what would be exciting work... then again I might be afraid of the answer.

So with the work being a little on the boring side, I have realized one thing is that I've become complacent with my way of life and that way of life is just "getting by" as in finishing work, coming home, taking a breather and repeating the process till the weekend until I use that to relax.

This life style has turned into a habit, a habit that I am finding hard to break out of. I know that I should be doing something new or at least progressing on some kind of goal, but it's oh so easy to just work, come home, rest and repeat. Creatures of habit as some people might consider us.

So I've looked for change, something to help me break out of this habit and to do something I feel excited about. It's strange to realize that I haven't felt excited about doing something in a long time, not since going backpacking through Asia or another time that I thought it would be so cool to make an equalizer circuit for a presentation on Lapalce transforms for a seminar.

I miss feeling excited about doing something and being with people that I can be excited with. Not just to do something crazy like a dare but excited in a productive way, the desire to push my self beyond boundaries to do something new. So right now, I am looking for something to be excited about, some positive pressure in life to do something enjoyable. Gotta find a way to break the habit.

4 comments:

Sacha said...

The only real way to do this is to get fired or quit. I doubt your company will let you do part time work, which is really what it sounds like you need - some time that isn't done working.

In my past experience, it takes more time than one appreciates to fully recover from a day of "work work", even if the "work work" is mundane or menial or otherwise doesn't stress your mental facilities. Just from reading what you are writing, it doesn't appear you are getting enough recovery time from work to do anything meaningful outside of work.

Paladiamors said...

The other things that I don't want to be doing (yet) is blaming the work schedule for the lack of time for me to do other things. I know that I have free time but part of it is spent doing nothing. I think that my time could be spent more productively, I just need the motivation.

I just haven't felt excited about doing something in a while and I wonder if is related to that.

Knowing that you want to do something else is important. I just need to line up the right opportunity for me to do it. Becoming a better investor is one of the avenues that I am looking at to get that freedom.

Sacha said...

Perhaps work is killing your motivation?

It's difficult to come up with ideas when your brain is so fried from doing 12 hours a day of research.

Paladiamors said...

It's a combination of work and recent lack of exercise. There are people out there that seem to have tremendous amounts of energy to work, I know for sure that I don't as much energy as compared to those people yet.

So I want to first maximize the utility of time and I honestly can't squeeze more time out, then I'll think of other avenues.