On a typical day, I spend about 10 hours or so at a computer. At work, if I'm not in meetings, I'm at my computer either responding to emails, writing emails, managing emails...you know the drill. At home, I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, or just surfing. What I do in my personal time tends to overlap into my work life, which makes it difficult for me to separate out my work persona from my personal self. I'm always researching new communication methods, web 2.0 tools, reading about government use of these tools, and looking for ways to apply what I love about the web to my work.
So, my challenge for 2009 is to try to figure out how to separate out the two aspects of my life...if at least just a little.
The way I really see it is that I am lucky to do for a job what I love to do in life. I'm a geek girl, and I love the web. I love connecting and communication with people (strangers or not). So, in order to look at making my personal self more "whole", I need to look at whether being online at night after a days work is really my way of relaxing (which has been my assertion for years), or whether it's causing me stress because I'm not able to disconnect from my work and focus in other personal areas.
Someone recently suggested that I stop doing research about new Web 2.0 tools and communication methods because I would feel less frustrated about how long it takes to introduce them at work. That doesn't make any sense to me at all. My feeling is that you fill yourself with as much information as possible, so that when the opportunity arises, you are ready to go. I don't know -- maybe it's the overachiever in me.
So, just to see if it helps, I'm going to try to fill my time with things other than geek things outside of work. You know...dogs, music, getting out and about...we'll see how that goes. Any suggestions, please holler!
In the meantime, I'm enjoying another 3-day weekend with my husband. We'll be looking for movies and firewood, but not necessarily in that order.
Happy New Year, all.
I agree with your point about soaking up as much knowledge as possibly in order to be ready to go, not only in any work situation, but in social situatons as well. Maybe let off surfing anything social network-related during work hours may help. I do surf Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader during the day, but I don't associate those activities with work in my mind. Editing surveillance reports and videos I a far cry from the social conventions of Web 2.0. lol
Posted by: trickster_brat | January 02, 2009 at 11:58 AM
Well, social networking is really part of my job, as I am in the process of doing some discovery for use of social media for govt. I keep the personal use limited to just personal time, but I am perusing google reader, and various shared links, articles, etc. for work purposes. I'm finding my way with the separation, though...it's definitely a work in progress, but I'm feeling the progress :)
Posted by: Marilyn (@marlinex) | January 03, 2009 at 10:48 AM