Requiem for a workaholic

It's officially that time of year for me. Work has ramped up, and it's beginning to invade every fiber of my being. Last night, I had a nightmare that there was a font issue with the 52-page program, wherein every instance of the word "Congratulations" came up as "Go screw yourself".

With all of the work we've got going, my boss picked a hell of a time to upgrade equipment. We've got a new color printer and a new computer station to run it and our old plate imager. The system was down all day yesterday because of software issues with the platemaker. We got that fixed today, but trying to get the new printer to work caused half of the front office to lose internet access. Tomorrow, we should be back up and running. The funny thing is, they didn't send us the special paper for the new printer. So, if we get it running, we won't be able to test it until sometime next week.

When we got the plate maker up and running after a couple hours of calibration, the first job I ran out was a pull page's worth of text at a 20% screen. The tech guy about had a heart attack, thinking that the calibration didn't take. I played it up a bit to mess with the guy. Good thing he had a sense of humor about it, otherwise I'd be in the hospital with a polyester printing plate lodged in my colon.

With things as busy as they are, I actually look forward to working late at night. The primary reason being that I don't have someone interrupting me every fifteen seconds. Today, it took me two hours to typeset a simple business cards because I'd get two letters into my typing and I'd hear someone calling my name. I've learned to just accept it as part of my job now, and it doesn't do any good to get all freaked out about it. Besides, it catches everyone off-guard when I don't get frustrated about it. They come into my office ready for a fight and leave horribly confused and feeling like a bit of an asshole. It's fucking great.

What's keeping me going? In the long term, the thought that I may reach my year-end goal of $4,000 in savings by July. In the short term, having Casino Royale playing in the background on my computer while I work. I may have to go get a few more James Bond movies to make it through this busy season. If there's any better way to get in the mindset of ruthless determination to get the job done as efficiently as possible, I haven't found it. That, and it's helping me form better pithy one-liners whenever I finally hit "print". "Well, logo, my old friend...consider yourself trapped."

...Okay, so I still got work to do.