DE Labor Day, "chain jerk effect"

Today is Labor Day in Europe. While I don't have any thoughts about labor conditions here, I thought I'd take a moment and reflect on my individual work situation these days.

To put it succinctly, I have an easy job. Too easy, in fact, because I see other people around me being busy, and I have this gnawing fear that I'm not prepared for some future overhwelming wave of busy-ness.

I have a metaphor to describe this -- I call it the "chain jerk effect." Imagine that you're out walking a dog, and it's on a really long leash, but you can't see the dog and you don't know how long the leash is.

At first, you're stolling along, and you think, "Wow, this is really nice." But then you start to get a bit concerned. What if the dog is running? At some point, the dog is going to run out the leash, and not only will it go taut, but it might even jerk the leash out of your hand or wrench your shoulder.

Another possibility is that the dog has slipped its collar and run away; if that were the case, you wouldn't even be aware of what happened until it's too late to have any chance of finding it.

That's what my job is like. Yes, it's easy -- at the moment. But I can't tell if it's simply an easy job or if I'm simply not doing what I *should* be doing. Maybe the slack in the "leash" will go taut one day, and I'll have enough things to occupy myself. But another possibility is that the "leash" will go taut so quickly that it gets jerked out of my hand, and I get overwhelmed.

That's the "chain jerk effect," and that's why I'm concerned about -- what keeps me from fully relaxing at the end of the day.