Granted, I never set out to do what I do and loved my job as a writer/editor much more than anything I've done in the half-decade since, but that doesn't stop me from being good at the jobs I do in the interim.Now I'm in audio-visual technologies and I take care of making sure all of the installs go through as smoothly as possible, which is to say, not smoothly at all, but with enough apologies that the customers don't usually sue the pants off of us.
Lately, this has been a bit problematic, because despite my best attempts to be mediocre, I'm somehow being seen as an asset to the company and as such, I'm given more work. This both surprises and stresses me.
It pay's good enough, the hours can be pretty flexible and no one micro-manages me, but I'm faced with the simple fact that I will never be talking to someone and say with pride, "See that mid- to low-level local company? I made sure they can play DVDs at staff meetings for them.
Doesn't have much of a ring to it.
The sorry thing is that the big push for me was our guilty pleasure TV show, How I Met Your Mother where one of the characters is an architect and is talking about pointing out his first building.
I have the feeling that the ship has sailed on that one for me. The strange thing is that I feel no more or less pride in the jobs I do here than similar ones I've done before - in comparson I took a great deal of pride in writing a good story or helping one of my reporters get rolling or finished, so it's not really apples to apples there - it's just a feeling that I really hate taking pride in jobs I do now.
I don't tank them, but when they're done there's not a lot left to be said.
I think we need to start selling strictly to orphanages and crippled dogs. That and I need to shut up and work - when I'm worrying about the impact of my day's work through the prism of a network sitcom, I obviously have bigger issues at play here.
(Photo from tv.yahoo.com)
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