So, I got a new job, which I started back in March. It’s a good job, I think. The people are all very nice, the work is well within my capabilities, and I’m grossly underemployed. Part of the reason for this is that my boss is, essentially, in the same position I was in at my last job: he’s been doing it all alone for so long that he doesn’t have the strength to 1) care, or 2) say no any more. That’s part of the reason I was hired: to figure out how to make some sense of getting stuff on this organization’s web site.
Maybe I’m just used to being over worked but it seems like I have a lot of slack time in my day every day (OK, today is probably an exception it being the Friday before Memorial Day weekend). So far, I’ve been pretty good about looking for things to do.
For example, the organization’s site does have a cascading style sheet file, yes, but it’s being completely overridden on most pages by the fact that we’re using Dreamweaver as a “content management tool” (do not get me started) and people have insisted on inserting font tags that, really, do exactly the same thing that the CSS file is trying to do. I am, however, rapidly running out of pages to clean up and the editorial process I’ve put in place is about to kick in, which is going to mean a lot of regularly scheduled meetings, but there in lies the rub: what do I do until that ball is well moving?
This is not to say that I haven’t been amusing myself with random web surfing, IMing with my friends who are equally slack or skilled at multitasking, and doing stuff that, will work skills related, isn’t necessarily directly part of my job.
I’ve had suggestions that I seize this time to write, to work on my fiction, but some how that seems dishonest and dangerous. It is a quandry, though: it’s time that I’ll never get back but they are paying me to use it. I just don’t want to find myself in a writing groove and, rightly, having to divert my attention to something work related.
I suppose this is better than the quandry I had at my last job: how to leave work at the office.