Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Home Work

Today at work I spent the whole afternoon procrastinating, dinking around, putting off work. About 4 p.m. I knew my chances of getting any work done were shot, and at 5 on the dot I grabbed my stuff and headed out for a short run (blah) and then to go ride Topper (our first really good ride since he tried to kill me, and it was wonderful). It was one of those days where I just couldn't focus, so I thought, Hey, no big deal, I'll just take my stories home with me.

And now here I am at home procrastinating, dinking around, putting off word. Ta-da! That was a wonderful magic trick, right? Of course, the night is still relatively young; I probably won't be in bed until about 11:30 and asleep until close to midnight, and so there's still time to work on stuff. Will I work on it tonight? Sure I will. Eventually. I mean, I worked on the story today at work. Granted, I only did like 150 words of about 750, but I worked on it.

The one interruption of my afternoon was some PR person in Canada calling to see if I got a book about leadership they sent me about two weeks ago. It was written by a woman from North Texas, and it's about leadership from the heart, and this PR person thought that it's health based since it was about the heart. It was a pretty entertaining stretch to hear her explain.

Sometimes when I'm on the phone I start listening to myself and it makes me tired. I have this total phone voice. I can't help it. It happens when I talk to people professionally; I talk louder, like I'm talking across a string between two tin cans, and I have this tone of voice that is completely different from the way I talk outside of work. Outside work, I say the word "dude" with alarming frequency. I curse a lot. My voice is deeper. On the phone, I'm loud and higher pitched and don't curse. I sound fake to myself, but I just hope it doesn't come across as fake on the phone. Who knows.

I'm hoping tomorrow at work will go better. I'll have some last-ditch efforts to track down this woman who will not freaking call me back, even though I'm supposed to write a story about her stable. And when I'm done with work, I get to go to Dallas and watch America's Next Top Model and Project Runway with Dan.

Someday I hope to have a job where I get paid extra for quality dinking off.

No comments: