I feel useful again
After nearly nine months mostly working from home, I had forgotten how little time you have when you work outside! Started at the usual 9am -- skipped out during lunch hour to get my car insurance renewed and then dashed back to the office -- finished work at 5:30pm then went to pick Bob from the LRT station, and moved on to dinner where we met up with Scorkes. Conversation was so riveting that the three of us only left at midnight!
Now I'm back home and trying to decide whether sleep or some long-neglected tasks are more important. Hmmm, tough decision. In the meantime, I'm blogging. How utterly predictable :P
Working from home often didn't feel very much like 'work' because of my very fluid schedule. Also, in my previous job, I was mostly left to manage things alone, and was a bit bewildered by the range of stuff that needed to be done, because I'd never done anything like it before. I was never very sure about what I was doing; a lot of times, I'd stand in front of the mirror at the end of the day and wonder what I'd accomplished.
From that experience, I've learnt that I'm someone who needs to be guided in my job. I need to be told exactly what my boss wants of me and then I'll try my best to deliver a stellar piece of work. If my boss is vague, I feel lost and tend to flounder in a sea of uncertainty. I'm not one of those fearless people who forge ahead and delight in being given a great deal of space in which to demonstrate their abilities and prove themselves.
That's why I did well in journalism, when my boss would say, "I want you to write an article on this topic" or "I want you to interview so-and-so and write a profile on him". I knew exactly what was expected of me and I also knew how to get there.
So today I went to work and was delighted to be told precisely what to do. It was great to be given a single task and to be able to focus completely on it until it was done. I can't tell you what a sense of satisfaction that gave me -- it's entirely different from writing, because I'm so used to writing that I don't get that "Hey, I did it!" feeling anymore. Of course, I didn't actually do anything very big or earth-shaking -- just input some data into various worksheets. But the lady who was overseeing me said, "Wow, that was fast! Your predecessor took so long over that!" and I shrugged as if to say, "All in a day's work." ;)