Sleep Deprived
In case you hadn’t noticed, I really have been good about posting almost everyday or at least every other day. That was all before the week from hell that I just went through. It all started almost a week ago when we noticed a virus on one of the computers at work. About ten minutes later, another one showed up in another office across the country. Then they started popping up all over. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that I work in information technology, but yep, I’m a computer geek.
So, a few computer viruses, what’s the big deal? Well, that was what it seemed like on Wednesday, but by Thursday morning, things were getting a little bit out of hand. To make that start of the story short, I ended up not going home on Thursday night and I worked a full day Friday. So I was up about 42 hours straight. I thought that was the end of it, but Saturday morning things turned really ugly and I had to call my whole team in to work. I really hate doing that because we all need weekends to rest, but things were looking pretty bad–and they were.
So, I stayed all night Saturday night too. I did go home for about three hours and took a little nap Sunday morning, but when I woke up, I needed to head back in and get back to work. So I get back into the office around 11AM on Sunday and end up staying until after 7 on Monday evening. This is crazy! Today, Tuesday, I stuck with a little over a 12 hour day, mainly because I knew things are really under control this time. [Knocking wood]
Keep in mind, I’m not exactly college aged. Yeah, sure, we can all pull all nighters when we’re 18 or 20, but I’m in my 40’s, hardly a Spring chicken. So, how do I do it?
Uh, no, I’m not asking a rhetorical question here, I’m serious. Or maybe the better question is WHY do I do this? It seems like most people can’t do these types of hours and normally I couldn’t either, but this was different. This was like someone brought something bad–the virus/worm–into my home. This was a matter of pride. I take a lot of pride in my work and my responsibilities at work and the mere fact that something like this could happen was very embarrassing to me. For that reason, it was extremely important to me that I did whatever was necessary to minimize the impact to the company.
The funny thing about things like this is that frankly it is a lot like peeing your pants when you are wearing a dark suit–you know, you get a nice warm feeling but no one notices.
The other funny thing about the peeing analogy is that if I didn’t do the Superman effort, then they would notice that I was a slacker. Kind of a Catch-22 I guess. I either go way above and beyond and everybody sees normalcy, or I just do the average effort and people think I’m a slacker. How does one win in that world?
Okay, maybe I’m a little bit sleep deprived.
Now that I think things are back to normal, look for me to get back in the swing of thing as far as posting. I plan on it anyway, and we all know about the best laid plans of mice and men…
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