Tuesday, November 25, 2008

I want that

"...there is something thrilling about working late...with a bunch of other brilliant people..."
I have done several all-nighters for my career, but always alone. I had company with me once, because my husband had to bring my then-infant daughter to me at 3 o'clock in the morning in the server room so I could breast feed her while I was reconfiguring the networking equipment's physical connections. That was totally hawt. Nawt.

I don't mind the long hours, the working late, the running home for dinner and night-night, then going back to work (at least, I didn't mind it 8 years ago). But I do mind it when I'm doing it alone, and the evening is spent verifying that the backup tapes have been successfully logged, cleaned, archived, reset, or waiting for downloads to finish and machines to reboot. Or even when I'm drafting a Best Practices how-to for the client's executive team in language they may - but probably won't - bother to read.

I am so over it.

I'm sick of giving hours of my life, in the quiet belly of the middle of the night, to a bunch of stupid, inanimate, pain in the patoot machines that somebody else built and designed. I'm tired of proving a woman can be just as hard-core, can work in heels and a skirt with a screwdriver* in one hand and a bunch of cables in the other.

I want my long hours to include "a bunch of other brilliant people" instead...I want that.

.....................
* a metal one - not the fun, liquid kind

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a woman who transitioned from tech to law I have to say...you may never want to go back to late nights, even with brilliant people in the mix!

gudnuff said...

Shhhhh! I've got part of me believing that I'm totally up for it, and the other part that isn't is almost asleep. Speak softly and don't wake her.

Anonymous said...

Heh - that I completely understand. Once I made up my mind, I didn't want to hear anything negative about law school.

It is funny, though. I went from being the tech person in an office and explaining basic computing principles to marketing types to being the (default) tech person in a law office explaining basic computing principles to the boss. Like why I won't update the database in the middle of a work day. Sigh.

gudnuff said...

True...I've already intuited that the smell of techie is a hard thing to get rid of. So...it's impossible to Just Say No? That's pretty disheartening.