Tuning Out...

I am not cut out for meetings. I have a very, very short attention span, and when plans for a very real three-hour weekend activity branch into immeasurables such as social transformation, values formation and spirit of volunteerism, I find ways to amuse myself. Like doodling. Or dreaming up imaginary conversations. Or imagining thought bubbles coming out of the speakers.

I tend to tune out when meetings turn verbose, when two-minute monologues can be summarized in three words. I have this urge to echo something that came out of my years in corporate slavery: that Romans didn't build an empire by having meetings: they did so by killing all those who opposed them.

I have no wish to build an empire, and I'd like to believe that I have no homicidal tendencies. But I don't like pointless, just plain shooting-breeze meetings. I'd much rather doodle. Or listen to what's not being said. In most cases,it's what's not being said that matters anyway.

Weird Sister (check out Immateur Anthropologist) told of this blah teacher in high school who practically bored the whole class to death. So that they would stop short of notching a world record for simultaneously nodding off to sleep, she and her classmates devised ways to keep boredom at bay. For a while they thought reading komiks on the sly (hidden between the pages of the textbook) was the neatest thing. Until they saw this boy at the back of the class making bubbles out of his laway (saliva).

I wonder if I can pull that off during meetings :p