A lesson in futility

fu-til-i-ty (n. pl. fu-til-i-ties): 1. Lack of effectiveness or success. 2. The quality of having no useful result.

Recently, for the past month or two, as I leave the office at the end of a work day, it almost blows my mind how busy I am.  Everyone is insanely busy.  But I've never before experienced such a long stretch of daily growth of my To-Do list, with never a day where I'm able to break even, let alone make the list shorter.

It's truly a frustrating feeling.  For every one person I assist on a given day, there's at least one or two people who get zilch from me.  Zippo.  Nada.  As hard as they try, I'm just completely unavailable, buried under an avalanche of other work.

But as tempting as it may get to catch up on a few emails at home in the evening, I've been downright refusing.  If I have so much work that I can't get it done in a solid 12-hour workday, I simply have too much, and I won't turn them into 15-hour workdays on my own free will.  I won't turn hard work into overwork.

Now if only I could apologize in advance to all my colleagues I'm going to end up ignoring on any given day.