Rick McGavin

I started this blog with the intent of blogging about writing. By outlining my struggles and how i overcame them. Lately, I have been using it almost as a means of venting about my job. I never intended that.

Now I want to get back on track. This blog was created to be about writing, and I intend to steer back in that direction. I also need to work on my time management and task execution. I’ve started using some new methods to accomplish this. One of them being The Secret Weapon. I’ve found this very helpful, especially when coupled with scheduling time to do the tasks on my Calendar.

It was Thursday afternoon. I was on my way to my boss’s office. It had been a fairly typical day, and by typical, I mean absolutely chaotic. That’s the norm at my job. Any day can result in multiple system outages, corporate security incidents, and a minimum of 3 verbally berating conference calls with the VP of our business.

While walking to the back of this old warehouse now converted into a call center, I had a feeling I wasn’t being called to accept an employee of the month award. I had a distinct feeling I was summoned for counseling, which is just a nice way of someone talking to me about fucking up.

I had fucked up indeed. It happens a lot in my current situation. I’ve been dumped on and overloaded. I’m also the only tenured manager out of 4. I know how to do everything, so everyone tends to expect me to do… everything. This was clearly going to be a conversation about how I didn’t manage to do… everything.

I had apparently forgotten to load a class in to their systems. I didn’t know the class was ready to be loaded. It’s not my business unit, but the managers who own the unit don’t know how to load their own agents into the systems, so it’s my responsibility by default, even though the problem is that they won’t learn. Actually, that’s only part of the problem. It’s honestly not manager work. I shouldn’t know how to do this, and I certainly shouldn’t be expected to do it. I am though.

Ultimately, the advice I was given was that I need to learn to prioritize. I always found this humorous because it’s vague advice. I always try to explain that I didn’t get A done because B was also an urgent priority. I simply chose to complete the task I felt was most important, and take the heat for the lesser important task being incomplete. In essence, I prioritized.

So their advice falls a little flat on me since I did prioritize. I found this advice rather ironic because I do need to learn to prioritize, but not how they suggest. For about the past year or more, my priorities have been like this:

Work

Relationships

Self

I’ve been putting work as an absolute first for far too long now. I’m the type of person who will come in on a Sunday night at 9PM if you need me to. I always want to be a team player, and help the team succeed. This can have a dangerous result if you end up on the wrong team.

These days, people aren’t loyal, and some people will just see this as an opportunity to take advantage. It’s a shame, but I’ve learned this lesson the hard way. I work with more than a few people who are happy to let me take everything on, and point fingers my way if something is wrong.

When I’m not working, my girlfriend is frequently running my life. She’s not too bad, but I have to take her to doctor appointments. She can also get upset easily in general, which can lead to me focusing my attention on her at any given moment.

Finally, I’ve put myself last, which is why I had a rash on my neck for over a year without getting it checked out. I’ve prioritized myself last, and see going to the doctor and taking care of myself as something I should do “if I get time.”

The past year has taught me a lot of lessons about the dangers of living my life this way. I’ve completely lost myself in work, and never take time for myself. I need to make a change.

I should have a priority system like this:

Self

Relationships

Work

I need to put myself first. I can’t think of taking care of my health as something that I’ll do in my free time. It needs to be prioritized and I need to make time for it.

The really important part of prioritizing my relationships above work is mainly to keep it. Work has put a terrible hamper on my relationship. I won’t go into too many details.

At this point, I have to eat crow. I didn’t fulfill any of what I said I would. I was all talk. I could sit here and make excuses to the vast and nameless internet, which would be ultimately pointless as I’m quite certain no one is reading. 

My main problem: Work started turning into a 15-hour a day gig, but I still have not managed to do anything I set out to as far as writing goals go. It’s a shame I let my work life take over so much as well. I’ve learned some interesting things about myself the past few months as a result.

1. Learn to Say, “No.” 

People will gladly overload you if you keep saying, “yes.” They will also be just as quick to blame you for any failure as a result. After all, you did agree to take that shit on. 

I have a bad habit of taking everything on. Sometimes, I don’t take things on and they are dumped on me, but either way, I need to push back. I’m learning it’s better to say, “No, I can’t do that in the time frame you need me to.” than it is to say, “Yes, I can get that done.” and just fail at it anyway. 

2. Follow Up on Commitments or Eat Crow

When you’re completely overloaded and you keep saying, “Yes.” You’re not going to follow up on everything. At some point, you will drop the ball. This blog is a fine example. I have many others in my work life that I frankly will not share. I’ve failed to follow up on the commitment I made in my first blog post.. Now, I must eat crow. The only other option is just to stay hidden or create a writing pseudonym. I’d rather own my failures. 

So, I probably could have called this, but March got away from me. Now, as promised and anticipated, I have to admit defeat. The month isn’t over, but I may as well call it now. Work defeats me. It manages to consume all my time. It would be lame to continue down this path about how I can’t write because of work as I’m sure many people are in a similar situation and figure out how to make time to write. 

Ultimately a lot of this boils down to my inability to make a decision and stick to it, especially when it comes to my writing. I chose the goal of writing a short story mainly because it’s short, and I assume I can get some sort of recognition quicker. Truth is: I don’t read short stories nor do I like most of them. (I also hate poetry as a side note.)

While I did not achieve my writing goal this month, I must say that I’ve introspected on why I didn’t a lot this month. Work played a major factor I must say, but simply put I have to ask myself: Why would I commit to a writing goal based in a genre or form that I don’t particularly like myself. 

I’ve always been a bigger fan of the more mainstream stories. Stories that are easy on readers and entertain. I like literature, but I’m not a Thomas Pynchon fan. If I wanted to do a puzzle, I’d buy a jigsaw. Either way, I just want to write fun stories that people enjoy. For me, it doesn’t have to be great literature. Take a look at Stephen King. He writes like a mad man. They aren’t all amazing pieces of work, but some of them are, and I suspect they all entertain. 

I’ve always toyed around with the idea of screenplays as well. After some discussion with a couple friends, I think that’s where I’d like to focus. 

I also like having a couple people I can actively bounce ideas off. It seems more interesting to me to work as a team than as an individual, and this team set up seems far more commonplace in screenwriting than anywhere else. 

Long story short: I’m learning that I need to write what I enjoy reading/watching, and then stick with it. This also makes me wonder if others have struggled with these kinds of issues. Indecisiveness, not knowing what writing to pursue, struggling to balance that real-life job with your dream of writing professionally. If you happen to read this, and you are in the same boat. I’d like to hear from you.

What’s the purpose of starting this blog? To make myself accountable. I’ve spent the past 10, probably more, years of my life wanting to become a writer. That said, I have done very little writing, and I wouldn’t consider any of it publishable. Much of this was a way to avoid my fear of the inevitable failure and rejection that comes with eventual success.

How does one combat such a thing feelings? How do you get past the fear?  Announce it to the world. Now that it’s out there, I have no choice but to push myself harder, and hold  myself accountable.

This month’s goal? Simply write a short story and submit it somewhere for publication, and most likely rejection, but hopefully in the process I get some feedback, a little constructive criticism. Because in the past ten years I haven’t failed at everything. I have a  decent job where I started at entry level just 2 and 1/2 years ago. Now I manage about 150 employees, and I know I wouldn’t have gotten that success without a lot of feedback, which leads me to another goal here: Finding the right people to help me grow as a writer, and hopefully in doing so, I can also help others grow as well.