Eureka the Smart

I know, I know. How dare I tease you with regular posting only to snatch it away so soon. Busy fortnight at work resulting in an exhausted Eureka, which has therefore created the current sniveling, heavy-headed, sinus clogged, Thursday night at home with a fever creature that claims to be Eureka. Yes, I caught a cold. Boo hoo. Lucky for you faithful (or insane) 6-and-a-half readers, that means I'm home long enough to post an update here.

So, work has been pretty hectic because we've been working towards today's H1 2009 earnings announcement. That basically means Eureka has been pouring over meaningless numbers for the last two weeks trying to figure out how much work the Dragon's Balls has scheduled over the last quarter, how much old work remains, which entity contributed what, how much chemical poo who sold, at what price, to whom, through whom, etc... An endless flow of Excel sheets, links, updates, amendments, adjustments, reallocations, and most importantly, MISTAKES. I cannot begin to list the number of stupid mistakes I've made over the last two weeks. I can't even seem to copy a phone number correctly. I am either stupid, careless, dyslexic, or a combination of all three.

I think it is a combination of lack of motivation and an inherent inability to digest numbers that's making me this prone to error. I mean, when I was at university and writing 30-page papers, I would rarely make more than possibly one slight typographical error. My fact-checking and evidence was always foolproof. My citations were exemplary. My work was top-notch ALL THE TIME. But here? I make stupid mistakes all the goddamn time. AVOIDABLE mistakes. Mistakes anyone with half a brain shouldn't be making. I have never felt stupider or smaller than this week. Mile-A-Minute must think I have the cognitive capacity of a flea. Even a flea is smarter because a flea knows to jump high and feed. I can't even do that properly.

I'll be sitting down focusing on getting all the right items in the right places and Mile-A-Minute starts bombarding me with inane questions because he's too lazy to open up a spreadsheet to check for himself. This distracts me and leads to a mistake, upon which a couple of others are built. He then asks me to do X or Y useless, unimportant and unnecessary task right away, which distracts me once more and leads to mistakes 5 and 6. He later forwards an email he believes he is too important to reply to, distracting me once again, leading to mistakes 10 through 12. And so on. Once I am done, he takes a look at the document and finds several of these silly little mistakes, meaning the document must fly back and forth thirty seven times to amend. And yet, none of these mistakes should have been made, because they're things I:

a) know,

b) should have noticed myself if I'd paid attention to what I was doing, and

c) can easily avoid in the first place BECAUSE I SHOULD NOT BE THIS CARELESS.

I have wanted to take my desk chair and ram my head with it no less than 76,654 times over the last few days. It is a huge blow to my self-esteem. But will I learn anything from this experience? No. I know what I'm like. I will continue to be careless because I know Mile-A-Minute will check up after me. It is a subconscious desire to make him work more than 30 minutes a day - if that. But at the end of the day, I'm still the one doing all the dirty work, and I'm the one who looks like an idiot. Lose-lose situation folks.

But hey, at least I make bank every month :)