The Point Of Diminishing Desire

I have a theory.

I have long speculated that, whenever someone works and is not morally, culturally, or socially obliged to support anyone other than himself and that all his needs are sated by his work, he will eventually encounter what I call the "point of diminishing desire." At this point, no matter how much he loves the work, the desire to do so just begins to disappear. No amount of motivation will help, save for a complete overhaul of the details of the work that have caused him to enter this point in the first place. It will eventually just grind him down to the point when he goes to work and fulfills his set tasks, and nothing more.

I've reached that point.

I simply don't care enough about the job to do more than just what is required of me anymore. It doesn't really help that I've been writing about the same general field since I started this gig. I mean, sure pharmacy and medicine are interesting topics, but if I wanted to focus on them each and every minute I spend in my workplace, you'd think I'd have taken up something like, oh, I don't know, pharmacy and medicine? As much as I love writing, I kind of like a little spice in my life a bit more. I want to stop writing about this drug and that, or about this medical problem or that, because as interesting as they might be, they get old.

Really old.

It doesn't help that the keywords we have to work with are perhaps the most constricting set I've encountered since "Project Micah" from by Intellicrap days. Granted, the ones from that old thing were even worse on a variety of levels, but at least there was a certain flexibility granted in the general topic. So long as we could plug the keywords in without making them look too obvious, then there was no problem. In other words, I could write about drag racing if I damn well wanted to, so long as I manage to sneak in a mention or two (or six) of the keyword for that particular article. Considering the fact that the keywords were automotive in nature, I didn't have too much of a problem.

The case is not the same where I am now. The case is bitterly, bitterly different. The keywords not only tie our hands on what we can write about, but the topic has to fall within a certain range of acceptable areas. Of course, this is only the official word. Unofficially, we can't really veer away from one topic and writing about other possible fields can sometimes feel like a practice that is silently frowned upon. It doesn't help that the management sometimes comes across as being willing to put forth new restrictions on what can and cannot be written.

While I understand that this is a business and we are following SEO procedure, there are times when the guidelines and requests border on sheer stupidity. For example, they recently asked us to deviate from our regularly scheduled quota to write about specific products. This would not be too much of a problem aside from the fact that pretty much any sort of information a customer would want to know about these products is already scattered on a thousand and one different medical and drug information sites. For us to write more would be idiotic, and even if we do take a different angle, it won't help. I mean, patients look for articles on their medication to learn about the important stuff like what they're used for and what side effects there might be. Incidentally, and ironically, this sort of information was exactly the type of stuff they asked us to avoid when possible. Idiocy. Pure idiocy.

Of course, that isn't even half as annoying as the lack of solid guidelines on the new stuff we're supposed to be making. I understand that the guy assigning us these things is busy, and doesn't always have time to consult us on what we think about things, but for the love of Cthulhu, at least take the time to write down the guidelines and format of what we're supposed to do before throwing it in our faces! I didn't mind the new work, but what I did mind was how poorly prepared the whole thing was. We were getting instructions on how the format was supposed to be and what information we needed to put it a good two days after we were told to start it!

Then again, maybe this is all beside the point. The point being that I just don't feel it anymore. I don't have that same spark I had early on, when I could cruise through double the current quota simply because I could. Take note that I did double the quota once, simply because I was bored and I felt like it would be good for a few lulz, but that was a long time ago and I have no desire now to do that again. I guess it could be that. All this griping and spotting even the smallest problems with how things are is probably just a product of me losing my drive to work beyond what is required of me - and even then, meeting only the bare minimum required. I don't want to work anymore, but firmly understand that I need to, so I do.

Funny thing, how slice-of-life shows so rarely touch upon actual slice-of-life lives.

Well, I guess I should be thankful that I still have my fiction to fall back on. Gods bless Darkness & Stars, even though I've only barely touched it this past month.

I blame the Anime Grand Prix.