There’s this great episode of Friends where Chandler quits his job because he doesn’t want to turn into someone who only cares about the numbers, only to get lured back by great pay, and the episode closes with all his friends wondering where he is at 11PM on a Friday night, and it turns out he’s at the office, yelling down the phone about the WENUS.
It’s sort of like that in my life right now. Not that I’m blogging about work, but there’s this new system being implemented to handle the financial side of producing a magazine, and as the person most adaptable to change (and the daughter of an accountant), it’s sort of been put in my lap to handle the transition from the old system to the new one. I can joke all I like about “I, for one, welcome our new PeopleSoft overlords”, but let’s face it, it’s sort of my job now.
What’s fascinating in all this isn’t whether or not too much work has or has not been dropped in my lap, or whether or not it was ever part of my job description to do all this stuff. What’s fascinating is there’s a part of me that LIKES it. And then there’s another part of me that HATES that I like it. I’m naturally a problem solver – I’m one of those people that will ASK to untangle your necklace for it because I like knots and undoing them. Which is, I think, a jarring side of my otherwise totally chaotic, creative personality. So there’s all this really complicated work to do, and there’s attendant paperwork, and there are people to handhold as they unwillingly are dragged towards change, and there are new systems to implement, and I complain about it because it’s a pain in the ass, but the real pain in the ass is I simply won’t let it go.
My otherwise disorganized, free-wheeling personality turns into the Virgo everyone who believes in Astrology thinks I should be. And I enjoy it. What’s problematic is that this isn’t my natural state, I don’t think. A friend once said, when I pointed out how overwhelmingly messy his room was, “you’re exactly the same as I am, messy at heart. Only you fight it and make yourself miserable by guilting yourself into being someone you’re not.” I’ve never forgotten it, albeit paraphrased, because what he was saying was that it is not in my NATURE to be meticulously organized and attentive.
Which, to an extent, is true. I am organized and meticulous in very small bursts, and then completely three-sheets-to-the-wind when it comes to maintaining that level or organization. These little systems and tasks I’m setting up around myself here at work, gleefully, will only turn into crabby sullen teenagers that I hate having to nurture in a few months.
So what’s natural? Is it really possible that I’m this diametrically opposed to myself? Can I really be BOTH nitpickingly organized and then a shitstorm of mess in the same lifetime? How can I both secretly adore making Excel spreadsheets, and then let my shoes litter the entire apartment?
Is this normal? And now, I have to go back to the WENUS.