Inspiration

The Redneck has inspired me.

I have a fairly easy job that requires surprisingly little of me. When it first started, it was difficult to remember everything I had to do, but as time has passed I have come to the realization that I am getting paid for doing almost nothing. True, I have moments in each month where I suddenly get swamped with this and that, but I'm the type that needs to be finished with the tasks that loom over my head. So I do what needs to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible and then I return to surfing the net, editing pictures I've taken, buying crap on ebay, and reading blogs like Born Again Redneck and The Drudge Siren(where I am the only reader that doesn't know the authors and I am hated for it). I'm also obsessed with a band called stone down and that takes up some of my time. On top of all that, I have this goofy idea in my head that I could make some pretty cool t-shirts so I sometimes spend a little time over at café press or in Microsoft Paint. Meanwhile, there is one task in particular that I have avoided like the plague.

First, a little info on what exactly it is I do.

I am a supervisor in a large call center that handles around 800,000 accounts, 2-3% of which are delinquent. I manage a team of 8 people that spend all day researching accounts that don't have any good numbers to call. For my employees, the job is stressful. They are required to not only find good numbers to reach these delinquent customers with whom we have lost contact, but they are also required to call said numbers and get the accounts up-to-date. A large part of my job is to observe them as they work and provide them with feedback on the job they're doing. That's the part I detest. I loathe and abhor the practice of observing their work and commenting on it. The process is simple and is the same for every supervisor across the board. It's not like I have to be creative, I just have to fill out a form. I hate forms. I hate phone calls. I hate this damned job. Literally 85% of my month is free time that I have to fill with bullshit. Since November, I have done half the feedback I am supposed to do and my boss can't stop telling me what a great job I'm doing.

My boss is a whole other problem. He has a reputation as a real asshole and everyone is scared of him. No one wants to work for this guy and everything I have ever heard about him was negative. But he treats me like gold. The guy constantly tells me that I am doing a bang up job and I never hear anything negative from him. I have heard rumors that he will act like everything is OK and then surprise you with something that was bugging him 3 months ago when he writes the performance review. But he told me specifically that if he never says anything to me, it means that I am doing a great job and he will never surprise an employee with anything that hasn't already been addressed face-to-face. So here I am goofing off all day and thinking that he sees only the good I do, and then I'm losing sleep at night wondering whether he's going to screw me on my review.

So the only way to resolve this is to get my ass to work. But when am I supposed to do all the other crap I don't get paid to do? Huh? How the hell does that get resolved? The internet isn't going to surf itself! People are commenting and arguing with each other over at Born Again Redneck and I need to be there to comment! I am the voice of reason, damn it!

I think I know the real problem here. I am obsessed with myself. I am the only person I know that has his own picture as the wallpaper on his cell phone. But that's a subject for another post.

For the Hatter

I neglected to mention my brush with fame last Friday in my previous post. That's right, I was in the presence of the Mad Hatter himself. In fact the back of the tall bastard's head was in many of the 160 pictures I took. Unfortunately, BAM was too busy to introduce us so I'll have to meet him some other time. Anyhoo, even though I don't share the Hatter's hatred for everything DeLay, I found this picture and thought it was hilarious.

My Friday

I haven't posted much here lately. Part of that is the wife's new camera and the discovery of a little something called GIMP Shop. And that is the reason for this post.

A couple things: First, there is a new link on my blog titled The Band. Second, since so much of my time has been taken up lately with taking and editing photos, I have thought lately about posting some of them. I know very little about photography, but I know enough to occasionally get lucky with the camera. I'm still very much in the learning process, but I am proud of some of what I've done. So I'm going to start posting some of my pics, and this week's (month's?) offering is a tribute to The Band. Long live The Band. May they realize every dream they have and I will be the bedrock of support as long as they live. DropD, Bam and Kev are quite literally the best friends I have ever had and Kemp will one day realize how incredibly blessed he is. Hell, Kev doesn't even know how blessed he is. But time will teach them as it has taught me. Long live The Band.



Here's the front man and his support crew.


Kev rockin' the house. Those lights were on for literally two seconds.


BAM putting the other fronts to shame and making the girls swoon. Especially one in particular.














And the foundation, Drop. Taking it to the next level, as always. Freakin' rock star.

Kemp was behind the lights, so I need a new strategy for the backbeat. Flash pics are crap in this setting.

Verse and Punishment

Infest what you detest. Maimed.

What the hell is the deal with me and excruciatingly bad poets? I just hit next blog again and found this guy assaulting my sensibilities. Good lord, will someone tell these people that they suck and get it over with? Please? Is it up to me? Is this some sort of sign from God that my purpose in life is to seek out freakishly bad psuedo-poetry and hurl insults at the authors until they cry themselves even further into oblivion?

I'm afraid they'd kill themselves and next thing you know someone is appreciating them. Maybe life and continued writing is the best punishment. Long live the blogger!

Learn to sound the siren in your head. Hooked. Remember. Dismember. Misrepresented.

Holy crap.

The End is Now - A Dirge

Twice in my life I have walked away from something that turned out to be relatively successful - at least, successful enough that I regretted my decision. Not that I regretted it to the point that I would necessarily change my decision if I could go back in time, but enough that I would seriously reconsider things.

I'm a married man, and it has taken me 10 years or so to learn only a tiny bit about what exactly that means. My preconceived notions about marriage were all centered on sex and companionship in a very general sense. I never even considered the notion of compromise in the sense that it would affect the very way that I defined myself. When I think about my wife, I am overwhelmed with love for her. I am overwhelmed by how blessed I am that this woman wants to even talk to me, much less that she wants to actually share her life, spirit, mind and body with me. She is the best thing that ever happened to me in a very literal sense. I had no motivation prior to her, so everything I have accomplished since we became a couple I owe to her. But that makes things that much harder.

I, like probably 98% of the American population (if not the world), had very different ideas about what I would be doing with my life at this age when I was a teenager. My dreams had nothing to do with managing 10 people in a call center environment and dealing with an "Office Space" daily reality. My dreams had nothing to do with going to work right out of high school to help support my mom and younger siblings. I never dreamed of having a mortgage I could barely pay and cars that were so upside down they needed wheels on the roof. I never dreamed that the main reason I wouldn't get enough sleep would be because the baby was sick and we had to stay up with her all night. But I never did anything with the dreams I did have, and never would have without my wife. Again, this is what makes things so hard for me. With my wife's support, I think I could have been something. I really think I could have realized my dreams on some level. I don't pretend that I would have been the biggest thing since freakin' Pavarotti, but damn it, I could have been a contender! Life is all about balance, man.

It's not that I'm some big nobody or that I hate my life. But right at the time that I found someone that would motivate me and give me the support I needed to make something of myself, I had to deal with the fact that her idea of what my success looked like was a completely different picture to what I had in my head. This wasn't something that was discussed, nor was it a solid, well-formed idea in my wife's head when we first met. On the contrary, she was massively supportive of my dreams in the beginning. It's just that women in general tend to love security, and I couldn't offer that. Now I can offer it and then some. I have damned good insurance, job security like a mother, and no desire to drive my wife crazy with wild dreams of rock (or any other kind of) stardom. But I'm seriously on the verge of tears as I write this.

I have mourned the death of my dreams on several occasions in my married life. But I realize today on this - the beginning of the first work week of a brand new year - that my dreams have truly died. It's time to grab the shovels and the quicklime and read the funeral Psalm. It's time to nail two boards together and pour out a forty on the ground. It's time to secure the toe tag and slam the drawer shut as the pipers play. It's time to seek an artistic outlet elsewhere in a way that doesn't keep me from spending valuable time with my precious family. They are, after all the best part of my life and nothing could replace them. Life is about compromise and sacrifice. The time has come for my children to follow their dreams, to believe that life is beautiful, fulfilling, and a place where everything is tailored to their needs and dreams. They will have to learn that life is more difficult than fulfilling, but it won't be because their father is a burned out loser that can't let go of the impossible dream. It won't be because I care more about my hobby than I do about them. I simply can't strike the balance; some people can.

What I wouldn't give to be one of them.