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I don't mind running around in circles, as long as I end up getting somewhere. The trouble is, if you're running around in circles and hit a brick wall, there really isn't anywhere to go.
It felt kind of good to be doing things. I've spent most of the week slacking off, both because of my birthday and because of my adverse reaction to the onset of daylight savings time. Both are perfectly legitimate excuses for being slow and inefficient, but I can't get away with using them much longer. And they're only good one week out of the year, so I have to be more creative the rest of the time. Either that, or I have to get with it, get going, get back to doing my job.
So that's how today unfolded. I was so tired last night that I actually slept for a change, and that gave me a jump start this morning. It was a good thing, too, because I needed it. Being gone all day yesterday left me gasping to catch up, and of course it's when I'm trying to make up for past slacking that all the new crises erupt at one time.
That was my morning, flitting back and forth like a hummingbird, stopping just long enough to discover that the next crisis was on the other side of the room. Earlier in the week it would have been impossible for me to cope with all this unfocused activity going on at one time. Today it seemed almost natural, and kind of refreshing. It's not that I got so much accomplished, just that I was making progress on several fronts.
Then came the brick wall. The Boss is at the other end of a fax line, several hundred miles from here, over mountains and across half of a desert. That's good, because it keeps us from getting on each other's nerves. On the other hand, he really got on my nerves today.
The problem starts with his idea that he has to be reachable at all times. He has two phone lines out in the desert, and when he makes outgoing phone calls he uses his fax line. Since he makes an incredible number of calls every day, some of them lasting much longer than would seem reasonable (to a reasonable person), there are times when I can't fax him anything. My fax machine will try three times, then print out a "no answer" report and give up the chase.
I did the only thing I could do after half an hour of failed faxes. I gave up. I sat in the recliner and read a chapter of the book that I've been neglecting since the war started. It was great. It kept me from thinking evil thoughts, which often lead to angry words, which usually result in hard feelings. I could have phoned him and told him to get off the fax line, but my feeling was that discretion was the better part of jumping into the fire with both feet.
And eventually all my faxes to him went through, and no one was any the wiser. He didn't know how much time I wasted trying to send those faxes, but he didn't know I'd taken time out to read, either. I suppose I should have kept running around in circles, but slamming into the wall was my sign that it was time to stop. | 
