Sisyphean adj. involving endless but futile labor.
I’ve commented many times on the similarities between messenger work and ditch digging. Except when you dig a ditch you can look back at the end of the day and admire the progress you’ve made. I’m a big fan of tangible results. Show me. Let me see what I did. What’s the point? Why? Why did I do that? What does it mean? Why should I risk my life? Why am I working so hard? What’s it for? I don’t ask these questions too often in my messenger job because if I did I wouldn’t make it through the day. I have a tremendous amount of internal motivation that keeps me going most of the time. Let me assure you I don’t ride my bike because I give a shit about the attorneys I work for, or their cases or their clients or the vast majority of the legal documents I handle. There are some very good people I work with and for and I will go out of my way for them because I care…about them…not their boss or their law firm or the nasty divorce case they’re working on. I’ll invent some arbitrary goal or deadline or challenge for myself just because. Or I’ll ride faster to pick up an overnight job at the end of the day than I will to make a Noon deadline court filing. Arbitrarily embracing the arbitrariness of it all. Over the years, I have learned that my level of exhaustion at the end of the day is not an accurate measure of what I accomplished. However neither is the dispatch log or the billable jobs I've signed-off on. When I come up with scale for accomplishment I’ll share it with you.
Sisyphus comes to mind and came to mind last week when I saw a guy outside of 925, The IDX Tower, sweeping up. It was raining and windy with a constant 30mph wind and gusts up to 55mph. And this guy was sweeping up one leaf at a time with his broom and dustpan. No joke. Leaves are blowing by, swirling, gusting, flying. Thousands of leaves on the street, in the air, out of control. And this guy was sweeping up one leaf at a time. Talk about futile. I stopped and watched him for a while and laughed. I discussed it briefly with Jonny Fever in the lobby and felt a bit better about my job.
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