The price of freedom
Dear diary,
today I got a 6.5 hours meeting for planing a new building. I am a physicist, my passion is science. I am full professor at a University: my duties are teaching and research. Quickly I was hired for fulfilling my passion.
Regardless of that, today I sat and discussed with engineers, technicians, architects and other funny beasts about static of existing infrastructure, electricity, water, cooling, power consumptions and other amenities.
I had then to run to the post office to get a parcel because they close at 6 PM. At the time the post office opened today morning I was already sitting in my office trying to clarify some dubious affair with the personnel department. At the post office they also got today a two hours lunch break while I was participating to this amusing construction’s plan meeting, with nothing but a german coffee (do I need to use additional adjectives to describe the coffee?).
Of course you might say, the poor guys at the post office, they don’t get the salary I do and therefore I would have liked to ask the post gentleman, what his salary was. Then I could have easily calculated how much freedom costs following the equation:
Price-of-Freedom = My_Salary – His_Salary
Provided he hates his job as well as I hate sitting in useless meetings, he gets at least more free time than I do.
I would have loved to know how much I am payed for giving away my freedom, doing a job I am actually not supposed to do because neither I should have the competences (be aware dear diary I wrote I should) nor it is stated in my contract as one of the tasks I should fulfill.
I couldn’t ask him at the end because of the incredibly long queue of customers waiting.
I met another exceptional long queue of customers at the supermarket as well. Now I know dear diary why this city has always seemed me so empty: all people are around when I am already or still at my desk (or both)! Because if I get on average 5 hours amusing meeting a day, I need to follow my passion very early in the morning and rather late in the evening.
The actual equation therefore should be:
Price-of-Freedom = (Fulfill_Passion) – (Useless_tasks)
…because dear diary without useless (and time consuming) tasks by fulfilling my passion I wouldn’t look at the watch nor measure my hours in euros….
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