Glutton for Punishment
So I've taken another job that I don't know how to do. I didn't lie or anything, in order to get the job. It is stuff that I have some experience in (archive inventory - excitement!), so I have not misrepresented. But I do have this habit of picking up jobs that are right on the fringes of my experience and knowledge. Like, "well, I pretty much know how to do that... after all, I did this..."
The details are these: I got into inventorying the archives of the Tamarac Nat'l Wildlife Refuge, my favorite hiking spot near my house. They have documents and photos going back to 1937, when the land was originally being acquired. It's a difficult job to focus on when faced with sheets of photos from the thirties of people in snowshoes and plaid jackets with pheasant tied to their belts, people in canoes wild ricing, people maple sugaring. Cool. At least, cool to me. It reminds me that I actually did like some of my job when I worked at the Museum from Hell. It's only recently that I've recovered from running the Museum from Hell. I certainly haven't been in the frame of mind to consider the things that I liked about that job, at least not until recently. Any love I had for any of my activities at the museum got sucked out of me through frustration until everything I felt could be described by one word: apathy.
Anyway, this project has reminded me that, oddly enough, one of my great loves is to try to organize vast amounts of unorganized material. I've done it with artifacts, I've done it with photographs. I've never done it with archives, and I'm having to try out a whole new set of parameters for this project. Which leaves me blundering around most of the time, despite the fact that to most people, I appear to know what I'm doing.
Point is, I've realized something about myself: I love to bite off more than I can chew. In some way it is comforting to me to know that a project is so insurmountable that any success can be viewed as a big success. And on the flip side, with a project that is almost certainly doomed to a certain degree of failure, there is the comfort of knowing that you can't really fail.
The details are these: I got into inventorying the archives of the Tamarac Nat'l Wildlife Refuge, my favorite hiking spot near my house. They have documents and photos going back to 1937, when the land was originally being acquired. It's a difficult job to focus on when faced with sheets of photos from the thirties of people in snowshoes and plaid jackets with pheasant tied to their belts, people in canoes wild ricing, people maple sugaring. Cool. At least, cool to me. It reminds me that I actually did like some of my job when I worked at the Museum from Hell. It's only recently that I've recovered from running the Museum from Hell. I certainly haven't been in the frame of mind to consider the things that I liked about that job, at least not until recently. Any love I had for any of my activities at the museum got sucked out of me through frustration until everything I felt could be described by one word: apathy.
Anyway, this project has reminded me that, oddly enough, one of my great loves is to try to organize vast amounts of unorganized material. I've done it with artifacts, I've done it with photographs. I've never done it with archives, and I'm having to try out a whole new set of parameters for this project. Which leaves me blundering around most of the time, despite the fact that to most people, I appear to know what I'm doing.
Point is, I've realized something about myself: I love to bite off more than I can chew. In some way it is comforting to me to know that a project is so insurmountable that any success can be viewed as a big success. And on the flip side, with a project that is almost certainly doomed to a certain degree of failure, there is the comfort of knowing that you can't really fail.
Labels: just philosophizing, toad lake life
posted by erin | 10:05 PM
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