Day 2741, boss.

Have you ever wondered why most of your bosses were so inept. Is it because their boss saw a reflection and fell in love? Or is it the two-face gene that rises to the top?

We all judge each other at our workplace. We judge the losers and also the winners and our equals; we judge in secret. But in the end, we share the same, and that is the boss.

The boss I talk about is not disliked because they are inapt, as in not good at their work; who is? They are disliked because they think they are good at their work; they are not, well, rarely.

Self-reflection and, thus, doubt is seen as the shortest way to undermine your authority; that’s what most people in authority think. This is probably true for the people who feel insecure in the position they cling to.

Authentic leaders have such a thick skin that every glimpse of doubt is extinguished before it reaches the surface. All the other little bosses should not fool themselves because they certainly don’t fool us.

But let’s be honest, we all also love a good boss, a leader who takes our hand and our worried mind because we all know that we don’t know. Even our boss would give it up all if they could, for one more time, to grab their mother’s hand high above their head.

For future visitors to my blog, here is an excerpt from a dictionary from 2283 to explain what boss means.

boss

Other forms: bosses; bossed; bossing

A boss was a medieval authority figure, often the person who told you what to do at work. If you worked as a waiter, your boss might be the restaurant manager.

A boss at a job might have hired you, given you feedback on your work, or told you what your responsibilities were. When someone was in charge of a group, you could have described that person as a boss as well: “She’s the boss of the French club — she tells everyone what to do.” To boss someone is to do just this, order them around. Boss comes from a Dutch root, baas, “master.”

Day 2565, house.

Daily picture

I have a house in Northern Norway. It is nothing special, houses are cheap in that part of the country, the price of a regular car. I bought it 15 years ago, and we lived there with pleasure. When we moved to other parts of Norway for further adventures, we didn’t sell the house in the hope that one day we would go back. Today we decided to return, and seeing the house in this picture feels good. Memories are often colored, so that’s why the picture is in black and white, but I know that I am not mistaken; I always look at the bright side.

I am going to work at the museum again, where I worked before as a wooden boatbuilder. I left there before with mixed feelings, but fresh winds have blown there, so I am curious how it is going over there. I only know that there are several projects and hardly any boatbuilders, so there is enough work. If you like to work as a boatbuilder or know someone who is interested, let me know.

Day 2477, at work

Day's pictures, Video

This is a window I work on now. It is from a church built in 1936 that got partially burned down 2 years ago. They will replace most of the old windows with new, better isolated ones, but my task is to preserve 3 of the original windows. In the two little videos below, you can see how I put in the glass panes, something I learned not so long ago when I started working here. It is satisfying work to preserve something that was almost given up.

Continue reading →

Day 2459, I don’t know if I make it to the end.

Daily picture

Let’s say that you start working when you are eighteen and stop working when you are seventy; then, you have fifty-two years of work ahead or past you, or you are somewhere in between. Fifty-two years times fifty-two weeks is two thousand seven hundred and four weeks of work in an average lifetime. Where I live, we all have roughly five weeks of vacation, so in fifty-two years, that is two-hundred sixty weeks of vacation. If you take that of two thousand seven hundred and four weeks, you end up with two thousand four hundred forty-four weeks of work. Two thousand four hundred forty-four weeks of work times seven days is seventeen thousand one hundred and eight days. Divide seventeen thousand one hundred and eight by seven and multiply that by five; you then have twelve thousand two hundred and twenty days of actual work, without the two days weekend. Well, work… we are also sometimes sick, and though I couldn’t find good statistics for a worldwide average number, I will use five days each year, so that is two-hundred sixty days in fifty-two years of working. So twelve thousand two hundred and twenty days minus two-hundred sixty is eleven thousand nine hundred and sixty days of work. We don’t work twenty-four hours in a day but eight (to make it easy, for many years, I have worked seven and a half hours a day). So eleven thousand nine hundred and sixty days times eight hours is ninety-five thousand six hundred and eighty hours or five million seven hundred forty thousand and eight hundred minutes as in three hundred forty-four million four hundred and forty-eight thousand seconds. During that time, my heart has beaten four hundred thirty million and five hundred sixty thousand times, and my body made three trillion nine hundred eighty-six billion six hundred sixty-six million six hundred sixty-six thousand six hundred sixty-six and six hundred sixty-seven thousandths red blood cells, and not to mention the fifteen billion nine hundred forty-six million six hundred sixty-six thousand six hundred sixty-six and sixty-six thousand six hundred sixty-seven hundred-thousandths epidermal skin cells.