I am bad at my job.

I am apparently not quite bad enough at my job to entirely stop getting work, but I am bad at my job.

I cannot go into detail without revealing too much about what I do for a living, and as mentioned multiple times before I am determined to try to avoid revealing my real identity for as long as possible for no good reason whatsoever, but what I can say is that the day before yesterday someone at the job site complained that I was on my laptop and not paying enough attention to what was going at the site, and requested that I not be sent back on that job when she was there. (As I have mentioned before, I work freelance at many different job sites; I don't work continuously on one job or for one employer.) This person was not my employer, but was in a position that the employer was inclined to accede to her wishes.

I didn't find this out until I had arrived home after the job was over for the day, and when I first heard it (not from the person in question; she didn't complain directly to me; I heard it third-hand but still have no reason to doubt it) I was astonished. I thought I had been getting on very well with the person in question, and I had enjoyed talking to her. But thinking about it afterward I realized she was right. I had been too focused on my laptop at a time I should have been more attentive to other things. She was fully justified in her complaint.

This isn't likely to seriously impact my work prospects; as I said parenthetically above, I work for many different jobs at many different sites, and this one person not wanting to work with me again probably won't be a significant issue. But it really bothered me—and still bothers me; I'll still depressed about it^[1]—for a couple of reasons. First, I really liked that person and was looking forward to possibly working with her again. But second... well, guilt. Yes, I absolutely should have been paying more attention to what was going on at the job site. A part of me knew that at the time, but I wasn't admitting it to myself.

I've said before that my job was one that often required me to not do much more than be present and keep one eye on what was going on, and that I had time when I was on the job to work on the Wongery or on other personal projects. And that's... true to some degree, I guess; I admit I'm writing this very blog post while I'm at work (and there's someone else sitting across from me with the same job title who's currently just scrolling on his phone. But I've kind of letting things go too far; yes, I can get away with doing some things on my laptop sometimes at work when there's nothing else that really demands my attention, but (a) I was doing it yesterday when there was something else I really should have been paying attention to, and (b) I was being particularly blatant about it, not just browsing the web or writing posts and articles, but dealing with financial matters that required me to enter information for multiple credit cards^[2]. So yes, in retrospect this person was entirely in her rights to complain. Maybe I could have gotten away with doing what I was doing on my computer at another time that there weren't other things going on I should have been paying more attention to, and maybe I could even have gotten away with do something on my computer I didn't need to focus on as much while that was going on, but doing what I was doing right then was definitely inappropriate.

So yes, I've gotten complacent and I have to be more careful with what I'm doing at work. To be completely honest, I feel a little uncomfortable with typing this blog article right now, although I guess not uncomfortable enough to not be doing it. And I even fleetingly thought yesterday, okay, maybe I should just... not be on my laptop or phone at all when I'm at work. Maybe I should focus completely on the job.

Obviously, I didn't entirely decide to do that, because I'm still typing this blog post. And truthfully, there is enough downtime in my line of work that it's not unusual for those in my position to do other things while they're on the job. (And the other person with my job title has still been scrolling on his phone the whole time I've been typing this, so it's not like he's any more engaged than I am; there just isn't anything going on here right now that requires significant engagement. This was not the case yesterday at the time in question.) But those "other things" generally include reading books, or playing games on their phones, not things that require getting out their wallets and their credit cards, and there are times that they/we do need to focus more on what's going on. I guess I am going to continue to work on some of my personal projects at work; I'm just going to be more circumspect about what I'm doing and when, and I'm going to feel guilty about it.

But anyway, aside from making me feel terrible^[3], the events of yesterday have helped me to further come to terms with something that I definitely already knew and have even kind of posted about before, but that's maybe becoming increasingly incumbent. I do not want to do this job. This is not exactly my dream job. It is not even approximately my dream job. Heck, I made a whole blog post in the past called "Dream Job" about how this wasn't my dream job. (Well, at least that's what the latter half of the post was about, after I spent the first half rambling about unrelated or not immediately obviously related matters, as is my wretched wont.) And that's probably why I'm doing other things on the job—because this isn't what I want to be doing, and all those other things are^[4]. Could I be better at my job if I really focused on it, to the exclusion of all else, if I put more effort into it and worked on no other projects while I was at the job site? Well... in principle, maybe, in the short term. But I'm not sure I could make myself do that, and even if I somehow did I'm pretty sure I'd burn out fast. Well, faster; I made a previous blog post about feeling burnt out, too. But even if I may not be great at it, and even if (or even if that's because) it's not what I really want to be doing, I'm kind of stuck in this job because I need money and because, while this may not by my dream job, it took considerable time and trouble to get certified to do this job, and there is no other job that I am qualified to do that would pay nearly as well and that I would hate less.

Well, no other non-creative job. What I'd really like to do, of course, as I've said in multiple posts before, is to make a living creatively. Am I qualified to do that? Well, the fact that I haven't managed to do so yet suggests that I'm not, but then again I also don't know that I've put in the time and effort I should have... I've certainly put a lot of time into my creative pursuits, but not so much into anything with an immediate prospect of paying, or at least not enough to finish one of my projects that has an immediate prospect of paying. Would I be able to sell a novel, and make some money with it? Or an RPG supplement, or adventure? Maybe not! But maybe! But definitely not if I don't finish one!

The posts about my dream job and about burnout were, of course, only two of multiple posts I have made about how frustrated I was with so much time being taken up with my job, in at least some of which I stated my resolve to make more of an effort to find a way to make an income creatively so I don't have to have as much of my time taken up with this job. And despite saying multiple times that I was going to do that, I still... haven't really done that. I need to do that. And what happened yesterday highlighted to me again how much I need to do that. Will this be enough to finally actually do it, after I've said that so many times before? Well... I can't promise anything (well, I could promise it, but that doesn't mean I would necessarily follow through), but I definitely hope so.

I need to do the rewrites on my novel—not the one I wrote fifty thousand words of for Novel-Writing Month (well, yes, ultimately that one too, but it's less urgent), but the one I wrote fourteen years ago and think may be publishable with some rewrites and polishing. I need to write the young-adult young-adult science fiction novel I've been half-heartedly planning. I need to finish some of the many RPG products I've been noodling away at without ever getting them done. I need to try to publish some things. I need to try to make money creatively. I need to get out of this job.

Will this mean getting less done on the Wongery? In the short term, maybe, although I've been getting so little done it's hard to see how I could do less. (Okay, I have been getting some behind-the-scenes work done on the Wongery, finally tackling a big task I'd been meaning to get to for a while, but that'll be the subject of a different post.) But even if so, in the long run, it'll help me get more done on the Wongery, if I don't have this job taking up my time and—to indulge for a moment in overblown hyperbole—draining my life energy.

Am I really good enough at writing to make a living at it? Well, if I ever get anything done, we'll find out... but anyway I don't think I can be much worse at it than I am at my current job.