Top 7 Issues on My Mind.

1. Public education.  The teaching profession and how to bring some level of prestige and selectivitiy into it.  Treating failing students with the same urgency that we would treat a dying patient.  An achievable baseline of standards with a no tolerance policy.  The playing field is already unequal when it comes to mental faculty but kids who either have an innately dull wit, have low expectations or who have tremendous environmental odds to overcome have a double handicap if they have crappy teachers.  Why shouldn’t everyone have a fair shot at being average at the very least?  Capitalism is a bitch.  (A bitch that you know you wouldn’t want to live without but don’t know how to quell.)
2. CSR.  Corporate Social Responsibility, esp. with regard to working conditions, contribution to the global economy, environmental conservation.
3. Design.  Stronger, faster, more intelligent, more efficient, überfriendly.
4. Information and connectivity.  Moving the evolution of truth forward, making data aggregatable, strengthening networks at all scales.
5. Beauty.  Pure aesthetics.
6. Artistry.  To express yourself, tell a story, make a statement.
7. Diet.  Processed food.  Again, capitalism is a bitch.

How I avoid work.

Since I started working from home, I’ve developed a routine that looks something like:

1. Wake up at 7:30 AM.
2. Go downstairs and make coffee.
3. Turn on some bad AM “news” shows.
4. Eat a bowl of cereal or some other light breakfast.  I get fancy with breakfast when I’m feeling especially procastinatorific.
5. Drink coffee while surfing the bad news shows and sprinkle in some pretty good news shows as well.
6. If I can afford the time, go for a short run. If not, turn on the laptop.
7. Check my personal email.
8. Log into my blog aggregator, see what they’re talking about.
9. Go back and forth between the emails and the blog posts that catch my eye while simultaneously clicking through the links that pique my interest.
10. Open up my Outlook (where my work emails live) to get that long process of logging in going in the background.
11. Sometimes I get stuck in MySpace for a minute and then quickly shame myself out of there.
12. When I’m feeling especially pensive and avoidant, open up WordPress and start in with the ranting about topics of no special import to anyone but myself.
13. When I’ve finally gone through all that, switch back to my Outlook with great great pain.  It’s like the dread you feel when you know you have snail mail or emails with bad news.  I’m filled with that dread each and every day.

Needless to say, I hate my job.  Ironically, I have a great boss that feels my pain and the work itself is not even that bad but I’m so completely repelled by the thought of actually doing the work that every day is an exercise in disgust.  

So I know I can exercise my free will at any point and just work overtime to get myself out of this muck by looking for a new job.  I work from home at this thing and I don’t do anywhere close to 40 hours so I have no excuse.  I’m doing such a crappy job at the 3 or 4 discrete tasks that I’ve been given that I have no idea why my boss continues to keep them assigned to me.  I can assume it’s out of no choice on his part.