Homework? Drone Work

I don't miss school too much (the firewall from the real world aside). To be honest, a substantial amount of the best learning I did came well outside any formal bounds. All of the very picayune stuff that had little future application came in schools. You tell me when you do sentence diagrams these days. I know I don't, but I like to think I can put together a sentence without one. In any case, I don't love doing anything that makes me feel like I'm back in school.

Sometimes I find myself doing something that feels like homework. I'll get some kind of request to submit one thing or another in writing, and I don't jump for joy, although I love writing. I don't care much for technical writing or reports. I dislike anything that smacks of clerical work. I'm bad with details, and that's all that it is. When one of these things comes up, I do my best, but I'm not smiling. There's just relief to be done with it, and further relief that it passed muster.

I certainly do my best with such things. I may not enjoy anything without opportunity for creativity or humor, but I don't cut corners on that account. Perhaps the people who receive such things from me even count them among the better that they get. Then again, maybe they don't. I don't try to get creative when I'm filling in a form or writing a report, but that doesn't stop me from being rather flowery and long-winded. I could stand to be more concise, I will concede.

There is some motivation in this. I hope someday to be past such tasks. In some ways, I long to be the man accomplished enough that he no longer picks up his own dry cleaning, answers his own phone or fills out his own little reports. I may be apprehensive about losing independence, but I won't be sorry when I no longer have to do such things as paperwork. Perhaps that's unrealistic, though. I can imagine my father laughing at the idea.