The week started out pretty rough. I tried not drinking coffee Monday morning in an attempt to get my stomach to stop self-eviscerating. I drank two cups of green tea (”for the active body — yogi tea brand”) but by 10:45 I was crashing really bad. So, I had a cup. I still felt miserable, so I rode home to have lunch and ride my bike back to work. I needed to feel the wind in my hair.

Then it rained like crazy in the afternoon. A fellow laborer in the house of drudgery gave me a ride home. Gee, that seems like years ago.

Tuesday I rode in and we had Nick’s going away happy hour at Rocket to Venus. I ate dinner to offset the beer and rode home around 7 or so. I was beat and feeling achey on the way home.

Wednesday, I went to the UPA Many Faces of User Experience conference downtown at the Marriott in Harbor East. 700 geeks like me! I felt like I was going home…

Highlights from Wednesday:

Katrina Alcorn from Hot Studio in San Francisco gave a talk called How to manage a UX team (without losing your mind!). It was awesome and made me feel better about myself. Some keys points:

• managing creatives is challenging
• creatives are often very opinionated
• many creatives go from being skilled labor to unskilled managers - I never took any classes in managment!
• external pressures make life even more frustrating: so many people don’t understand what creatives do.

I would add that since people don’t understand what creatives do, their contributions are often overlooked, misunderstood, and neglected.

Another incredibly eye-opening slide from her presentation focused on time management for managers of creative folks:

• admin. & financial matters (10%)
• billable work (10-20%)
• client relations (20-40%)
• managing team (30-60%)

Hmmm… In my current position, I’m asked to be 50% or more billable. It’s all about the money. How can I properly manage and inspire my team when I’m heads down working on an ActionScript problem? ActionScript being a language that gets re-written every two years (or so it would seem…) and a language I have to re-learn every nine months because I have to be a jack of all trades.

I’ve had to leave client relations to the PMs, and this hurts my internal image among the upper management. (”What does Matt do?”) (”Struggle…”)

Finally, I was really shocked and saddened by the statistics Katrina culled from a survey by FSU on “Bad Boss Behavior”:

• 39% said their supervisor failed to keep promises.
• 37% said their supervisor failed to give credit when due.
• 31% said their supervisor gave them the “silent treatment” in the past year.
• 27% said their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or managers.
• 24% said their supervisor invaded their privacy.
• 23% said their supervisor blames others to cover up mistakes or minimize embarrassment.

Incredible.

Well, I hope Katrina won’t be upset with me for referencing her slides so extensively. I was really impressed and the information both consoled me and made me feel like taking action. It helped conclude that working at a supposedly creative job where everything is a struggle is like laying your neck wide open for a vampire to drain you.

I want a more fulfilling environment, where I don’t have to fend off grade-school level jokes and antagonism. I want to work with other creative people who are not so filled with pessimism and doubt. It’s going to take time and hard work, but I know I can find something better. I have to.

Katrina’s workshop alone was worth going to the conference! I’ll write follow-up posts describing thursday and friday, and my sleepless night wednesday, but I wanted to go into detail on this one because I found it so powerful and liberating.

there’s nothing like an interminable spring of depression followed by a good month of anger to tire a sap like me out.

I’m done. I give up. Let the rainbow of unrepentent happiness enter my heart again. no more conflict. no more angst. no more jealousy.

just positive, flowing electrical nerve endings singing like high tension wires or high voltage lines.

I need to wake up on the right side of the bed tomorrow, damnit.

and I will. watch me fucking blossom!

I’m at the UPA conference today through friday and frankly folks, it’s a wonderful little break from the overly competitive and antagonistic environment that work has been lately. I don’t know, maybe I’m being overly sensitive, but I put together a really well-thought-out survey to send to our customers and 1) only one person I send it to reviews it (she gives me a great review, which is awesome, because she is awesome) 2) the people who don’t take the time to review it because they’re too busy being self-absorbed forget about it and don’t give me credit 3) all credit goes to the new guy who smiles excessively 4) a certain person is always picking on me and antagonizing me, which makes me feel like crap.

crap it gets to me.

crap crap crap crap crap.

I feel like the bastard stepchild.

The keynote speaker at the conference talked about the importance of managers empowering their employees to do good work. Two weeks ago when I was assigned this silly assignment, I was excited and I took it very seriously. Then I get half-thought-out criticism, in addition to just plain people not acknowledging my efforts at all.

It makes me want to scream. Then leave. Know of any opportunities? Drop me a line. Seriously.

I searched for “How to be a douchebag” on Amazon.com, but it didn’t return anything titles.

So, with my recent experience, I think writing a book on the subject might be a good use of my time.

When will this be coming to Baltimore?