Planning to Plan: This Will Be Suck

In Office Space, on the whiteboard in the conference room where Peter interacts with the Bobs, some office drone has written "planning to plan." In context, the phrase is a shrewd summary of the double-talk and typical waste of brainpower that occurs in meeting rooms. Corporate America is skewered endlessly in that movie, and the small touches are what vaulted it into cult status.

I had three days off this past weekend and managed to commit about 8 hours of free time to playing catch up on work. It wasn't enough. I thought I was okay heading into Monday morning, but once it arrived I realized I had much, much more work to do. About a year ago I had a Korean professor whose English was a little shaky. During one legendary classroom discussion about how badly things can go in our profession, he said something about learning how to deal with it all or "This will be suck." And indeed, I have yet to learn how to deal with it all, and looking at the amount of work I didn't get to, that phrase has stuck with me for the past few days. It's so overwhelming that I literally am not sure how to approach it all. This morning I find myself planning to plan.

And then there's the cold.

I've been slightly sick on-and-off all fall. Nothing major, just the occasional headache (probably more occupational than physiological) and sniffle with a sore throat thrown in for variety. This past Sunday morning I woke up with a stinging sore throat and by Monday morning my immune system had gone AWOL - sore throat, headache, and a desire to do little more than to lay very still. The worst part, however, was my nasal adventure. As the French would say, "My nose, it was going le crazy."

So I took yesterday off, and upon further reflection yesterday afternoon, took today off too. It's just as well, since I need to not give my germs to anyone else and have to catch up on work anyway. The stacks of paperwork have reached critical mass. I have to get through them or my life will implode into a singularity of paperwork hell.

I'm all hopped up on cold meds. Hopefully that won't be too apparent in the papers I'm about to wade through.