What Passes for Professional Correspondence These Days

I received the following in my inbox this morning. All names have been changed to protect the guilty and irritating:

This woman is a total loser. Like a dead fish. I’ve met heard and have spoken with her before and after meeting and she’s only ever managed a cracked smile at best. Before I rang her, I rang AAA (Hoochi…) at the big UK engineering company WWW – that XXX committee member I met at the last user group. He was nice and said he remembered vaguely YYY being mentioned several months ago, but the committee hasn’t met for awhile. So I mentioned this to sour-sack-of-shit BBB when I rang her and she was pitiful in her response. “She” would appreciate that I didn’t contact committee members directly. Well “She” can f’ing piss off. Who the hell is she? She’s responded NOT AT ALL to us. And she didn’t even want to take my call today because she was in the middle of something. That always gets me. Don’t take the bleedin call if you are busy. And they were busy selecting a venue for the next user group (..so actually my call is well timed). Loser bureaucrat no body. Anyway, I was sales-slut cheerful and all that and said “oh it was coincidental – It was in fact a lead from a reseller”. Stupid woman. How does she know I’m not a friend of AAA or whatever. ANYWHO… In usual form, I’m not giving up. And in fact we do have ZZZ as a customer AND XXX likes us including CCC of XXX who spoke at their last stupid XXX user group. Whatever…… Just to share

Boredom

What is it about boredom that makes it a self-perpetuating experience? I am actually rarely bored, but sometimes, boredom sets in and I’m trapped. I always have books with me, the internet is nearly always available, I've got things to think about, and things to do, but when I hit the wall of boredom, nothing seems to free me.

Sitting here these past days, I’ve begun to realize in part where my experience of boredom comes from. These past days, I’ve felt trapped—waiting, serving, tolerating, enduring. When I feel stuck, having to endure interminable interruptions, I get bored. And then I get annoyed at the boredom and annoyed at myself for not being able to escape it, and perhaps even resentful of those whom I want to hold accountable for my boredom. Ultimately, and as a good Taoist, I really do believe that no one but myself is responsible for my boredom or my release from that boredom.

And that leads me to wonder if I really am a good Taoist if, despite my awareness of my own control of the situation, I am still unable to free myself from that boredom.

What do you think?