I've heard rumblings throughout the years--rarely and never very loudly, but I've heard them. Rumors that modern life has become too much for most people--both in pace and complexity. I've always just rolled my eyes and dismissed those people trailing behind the times as ridiculously lazy.

I mean, I'm lazy. Ask anyone in my family. I'm one of the world's laziest people. I procrastinate, avoid, hide out in fictional universes, and ignore everything ignorable. And yet, I found it impossible not to keep up with the pace of technology after the PC revolution. If I kept up, just through some kind of osmosis of what was happening in the world around me, then anyone who did not keep up was probably being deliberately stupid.

(I blame a lot of what goes wrong in the world on deliberate stupidity.) (Willful ignorance.) (Blind and blinkered idiocy.)

Anyhow. I'm starting to rethink that belief.

I've come to realize that "owning my own business" is one of the American Dreams because most people are incompetent and incapable--and they blame their failures on "the boss" so they don't have to face up to just how stupid they are.

As I look at the group of 60+ 'Nuts we've been saddled with and picture them in the corporate workplace, I can see why each of them left it, imagine what kind of relief greeted their departure, and see, in the end, why it's a darned good thing for the world that women and minorities are crowding the workplace.

Because I have never witnessed such a sense of entitlement in my life. Never, not even back in the 70s, been the victim of such patronizing misogyny. Never, in all my travels, met such a bunch of self-satisfied losers as the bunch of Old White 'Nutmen that I've seen around here.

I'm just sayin'.

STUPID! GET AWAY FROM ME!

I came in this week to a full schedule for Monday through Thursday. And, when I say full, I mean no lunch breaks or time to blink built in. Full.

First thing this morning, that went by the wayside. Via email, I found Vela commiting me to reviewing someone's campaign and making significant alterations. Which was fine, it only took an hour or so.

And then Vela IM'd me and said, "I know you're busy. I know none of your scheduled projects can be pushed back. I know we're past-due on those commitments."

And then she sobbed that she was between a rock and a hard place, needing some data for this Friday's NIMO meeting--and she tied me up, talking about the project on IM, for an hour. And then of course I had to pull the information she needed, which took another four hours.

Mostly, I blame Jason. I blame the man who told the NIMO committee last week that we could create 20 new campaigns for them--buffet style so that everyone could pick and choose what they were interested in, complete with customized ads--who offered all of this, saying, "...by next Friday, because we're not going to waste a lot of time analyzing data."

Vela is working herself into the ground, trying to get just one of them completed.

As for me, well, today's scheduled 12 hours worth of projects got pushed back to later this week, pushing this week's later projects back to next week--but not before the middle of next week because I have month-end reporting to do Monday and Tuesday. Always assuming I get 2008's year-end reporting completed this week.

Why is Anne blogging if she's so busy, you might ask.

Because I'm sitting here, wigging out. Having a little nervous breakdown.

I don't like today. I'm not good at doing sloppy work. I don't understand. The concept is beyond me.

Vela keeps asking me to "review" what she's doing but "not in detail" and to "broadly" approve it. I can't figure out how to do that, okay?

In fact, I can't do that. It's wrong. What the NIMOs are asking for and what she's creating isn't going to work and even as an example of "how this kind of thing might look" it's so badly off the mark that it makes my head hurt.

I can't approve it. Not even conceptually, okay?

I am not buying in to this. I am not responsible for this. I am not giving my seal of approval for this.

I am neither committing to making this successful nor hinting that any part of this might be even remotely successful.

I am refusing to be a part of this. Is there anyone who understands what I'm trying to say?

I am not taking the fall for this.

But!

I know! They pay me to do what they tell me to do--not to do what's right or what will work or what needs to be done. Just--what they say to do.

But!

It's wrong.

Like a rabbit in the headlights--I can't decide whether to hide or run.