Friday, August 10, 2018

Give Me a Sign...

It's extraordinary how often we make appeals to higher forces, imploring them to give us some kind of guidance on difficult issues.  It doesn't matter whether we are believers or not, we still find ourselves saying something along the lines of 'Lord, give me a sign'.  Of course, what we're really saying is that we find ourselves facing a dilemma where we can't make up our minds what to do - all of the available options seem to be present difficulties, so want some external supernatural force to make the decision for us.  That way, if it all goes wrong, we can't hold ourselves responsible - 'it's not my fault if God gave me the wrong sign, or he gave me the right one, but I misinterpreted it: he should have made himself clearer'.  This way we can obviate ourselves of responsibility for the situations we find ourselves in, even though, in reality, they are of our own making.  Personally, I pride myself on being a man of reason.  A man who eschews all the mystical nonsense of religions and the mumbo jumbo of whatever the latest spiritual or pseudo scientific fads are.  Yet, I still find myself looking for 'signs' to guide me through my increasing bouts of indecisiveness.

This week I've had received a couple of significant signs.  The obvious one is Google's site-killing algorithm changes which have decimated web traffic to huge numbers of sites (including here and The Sleaze).  Perhaps it is a sign that I should finally just give up on all this nonsense and spend my time more productively.  It isn't as if part of me hasn't been looking for an excuse to scale back my web activities for several years now - here's the perfect opportunity.  The trouble is that I'm not a quitter.  I hate just giving up on things. Besides, web traffic today was marginally better.  I'll probably update The Sleaze less, though.  I've found coming up with nw stories increasingly difficult over the past couple of years and the current schedule can be both punishing and time consuming.  Most importantly, it doesn't seem to translate into traffic, no matter how good or topical the stories are.

The other 'sign' I received concerned work.  I can't go into details, but suffice to say that earlier this week I had one of those experiences when the contempt in which you are held by some of your colleagues is exposed.  This contempt being the result of one's refusal to cut corners and bend rules to satisfy the ego of a colleague who is on some kind of personal crusade.  The long and the short of it is that because I wouldn't bend the rules and my own manager backed me up, someone in the office, with no authority at all, went behind my back and got another colleague to do the rule bending in question, then, basically, verbally abused me over the phone when I told them they were wrong.  For once in my life, I kept my temper and referred the whole matter back to my manager, who, understandably, isn't at all happy about it all.  The point, of course, is that this 'sign' is simply another indication that my continuing much longer in this job is utterly pointless.  As it is, I've simply been playing for time since I returned after my illness, as I've tried to clarify in my mind what my next step should be.  Quite obviously, I'm not going to have any clarity of vision until I'm free from this shitty job and the arseholes I have to work with.  It's just a matter of timing now.

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