I heard a quote yesterday from some famous gruffer – they’d claimed to “never have done a day’s work in their lives: it was all fun” or words to that effect.  Good for them. I’d love to be able to re-engineer my life’s history and in retrospect say ‘it was all fun’, but the painful truth is that I doubt that’s the whole truth.  While optimism or pessimism affect your view of the daily struggle (and I suspect, affect it more than you realize at the time) most work is daily.  Today, for example, is my admin day. I’ll attend a variety of phone conference calls, attempt to do some one to one calls with other people, and try to sort out the confusing morass which is the fun of the urgent and important overriding the necessary.  Should I focus on the internal certification scheme of which I am an important part, or should I respond to the pushy sales manager who demands time?  Is attending my division’s networking events critical (I’ve long since given up thinking I can socialise my way upwards) or should I load the database which has lists of all the calls I’ve made.  Which one determines my final rating is important; equally I’m too tired to play the endless charade which keeps me ‘relevant’.  I thought this was a job?  No, it’s a parade of some sort.