Even now, I find myself making all kinds of personal sacrifices for work. I even had to pass up on a friend’s offer to go to the Yanks’ opening day game today. Naturally, it was a killer game too, with Jeter jacking a 3 run homer in the 8th for a come from behind win. (Spare us the jacking/coming from behind jokes please). The problem is that I’m falling behind with work things because I keep losing time with stoopid things. Case in point…

So I found myself in a workshop for “Setting SMART Objectives” yesterday, the acronym meaning Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timed. It was a mandatory workshop for all managers globally, otherwise I would of course never have volunteered for something so corporate. This is technically my third year or so of being a manager, but I’ve never really comported myself as one. I still prefer to deal with the technology first and people issues last. I loathe meetings, presentations and workshops because for the most part, those things don’t move along at a fast enough pace, usually due to inefficient thinking, inarticulate people and an overuse of buzzwords and catch phrases which invariably lead to meandering discussion accomplishing nothing. Fortunately, yesterday’s workshop was actually meaningful. After all, work objectives are the things which our bonuses are tied to, so it’s pretty damn important to understand what guidelines govern these objectives. Naturally the class could have conveyed the information in half the time, but alas, because of the aformentioned factors, it took a full four hours.

Halfway thru, I stopped and was mortified that I had actually been actively participating in the workshop! I was making suggestions and helping to create the exact kind of “healthy discourse” that make these touchy feely workshop instructors wet their panties. The exact same kind of thing that I typically avoid for the same reason I avoid environmental rallies and such- basically it’s pretty gay. Sure I was just trying to move things along so we could all get out of there, but fuck, my brain was actually actively engaged in dissecting the issue of trying to create the best gosh darned objectives we possibly could. That’s when it hit me. I *am* a manager now! How did this happen??

*sigh* I’m off to Mi Cabanita to drink tequila and do un-managerly things to make myself feel better…