Thursday, May 28, 2009

Your Computers Stink and I'm Bored to Death

For the past eight months I have been writing for a website that focuses on local attractions, events, community functions and the like. It was fairly fun as I got to go to many functions that I otherwise would not have attended, most of them family friendly which made it easy for me to take my kids. The work wasn't hard, but it was time consuming having to drive all over town to cover these events. They paid pretty well, though, and it was nice to have a little extra money each month.

The first of May I gave them notice that I'd finish the month but not continue in June. They were stunned, asked me why, etc. I told them that with some of the other projects I have been working on that have recently started gaining some steam that I would have a hard time finding the time to do it all, that right now I was overloaded with assignments, and some of them required a greater amount of attention than I was currently giving them. All of that is true. That is the primary reason.

However, the secondary reason is a bit more caddy and two-fold. The computer program they used that allowed me to format my articles into a template and submit them was slow as molasses. The photo and video program they used was even worse. There were times, and many of them, that it would take me hours to get articles uploaded that didn't take me nearly that long to write. It was ridiculous. I was constantly having to contact tech support, they were always resetting the account. I'd lose my screen halfway through and have to copy and paste and re enter photo captions all over again. I'm short on time as it is. Sitting in front of a computer screen for hours when I have kids running around the house like a scene from Lord of the Flies got to be a little much.

The second part of that two-fold reason was that it became boring and wasn't challenging anymore. I like to be challenged or feel like my work required some effort. I felt like that scene from Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon yells, "Do you know how easy this is for me?" And it's not like it was ever hard or overly challenging, but it was at least a bit more fun. But, how do you tell someone that you don't want to work for them anymore because you are bored to tears and hate their computers? I guess in my case you don't.

2 comments:

Nancy said...

that sounds like it was a fun job but there's not much worse than a slooowwww program to deal with. I'm so impatient with stuff like that!

Joanne said...

Technology! Very frustrating sometimes, when you think it IS the 21st century. I could see moving on from work that isn't expanding, challenging. Kudos to you for pushing your own self, too.