Entry 1: This is not my job.
I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be tracking here. "Write down your thoughts," the Engineers said. "We'll be able to better help you with your tasks if we can see what you're contemplating." Sounds like hooey, to be frank, no offense intended. But the other Managers are doing it, and I'm now stuck reading the reports they have the Technicians writing, so I don't suppose there is a way out of it.
Manager Skreeve says that some of the clans and guilds are doing something similar as well, so apparently this is some sort of new "fad" spreading throughout the rest of the oinerovoric community. Well, for the record (since I now have to keep a bloody record), I do not approve.
There was a time, not so long ago, when my position within the group was simple: I helped plan small raids into the dreamspaces, designed some ways the Technicians could create emotional discomfort in the dreamer, and then made sure the etheric taps were working properly to collect that excess emotional charge so we could process it for our use.
Pretty cut and dried. It was a good job. It was an easy job.
I was good at my job.
Now... everything seems to be changing. The Engineers are bringing me these ridiculous, hyper-elaborate requirements documents, which, to my eyes, don't even seem to be focused on gathering emotional charge anymore. Instead, they're fixated on the dream manipulation methods, and are micro-managing how I, and the other Managers, go about laying out the disturbances. What's more, they don't even seem to be that concerned with the etheric yield, or how much excess can be extracted. Or for that matter, at this point, how many of the Technicians even make it back to deliver their payload.
First of all, I don't like the idea that we're sending the munchkins out like some sort of disposable shock troops. The other guilds and tribes and clans and organizations can do that if they want, but THAT is not how we run things!
Second... what is with the documents? You keep the job simple, and you don't need to write this stuff down. It is like there is this whole new layer of bureaucracy added to the process: if I do my job right, and the other Managers do their jobs right, the Engineers don't even need to hear about it. So why are we all of a sudden documenting plans and reviewing design specs? It isn't like the Engineers are answerable to anyone else, and they're more than brilliant enough to keep all the plans resident in memory themselves- it just irks me to suddenly have to deal with metrics and approval processes to get the same job done.
Just let me design and implement nightmares, like I've been doing for years, and I'll get the damned job done.
But this... this whole new process of approvals, and top-down crap... this is starting to be a problem. It is my nature to be a Sleep Disturbance Manager. That is what I am. That is what I do.
This new crap? This is not my job.
