Self-Improvement

It's hard to think of the oilfield as a character-building environment, with its tobacco-spitting profanity-spewing ill-mannered denizens, but there is one bad habit that this job has taught me to practice no more.

I am no longer a procrastinator.

This fault has been wrenched out of my by countless episodes of sheer horror at the consequences of procrastination on the job. Have the tools already arrived at the rig? Have they been measured, programmed, prepped and been loaded with batteries? If there is any reason why the rig can blame you for any delays in loading the tools into the hole and getting ready to drill, they will be charging you $$$. Of course that $$$ charged doesn't directly affect my paycheck, but a delay of even a few hours due to procrastination can put a permanent mark in my file. And this ain't no baseball game. Here it's 2 strikes and you're out.

If there's a single piece of paperwork or a single small task that needs to be done, I'm going to get right on that. This morning, as our tools were being offloaded from the boat, I was dripping with guilty feelings for waiting a WHOLE HOUR to go outside and start working on them. Why? It was pitch black, 35 degrees, biting horizontal winds and a steady rain. NO EXCUSES, HOLLY! But at 7:15 am when the sky became a dismal grey instead of an unforgiving black, I layered up and soldiered on with my duties. Now my work is mostly done, and I'm only taking a break to write this because I'm waiting on someone else.

My time off has taken quite the same tone. One of the first things I always do upon my arrival home is pull out all my dirty laundry, start the wash, and immediately start restocking and repacking for my next trip. Once that's out of the way, I go out and have as much fun as I can without hesitation. I see all the friends, catch all the shows, and do all the shopping I can handle because I never know when I'm going to get a call that says "Be ready to leave for the dock in three hours!"

I'm not perfect, as yet. The other week I did wait three whole days before I finally got myself to the craft store to buy the last of the bridal shower invitation supplies, and yesterday I did use rationalization for why I was putting off a particularly arduous task for today (which I have since begun). But if my mother could watch me at work, she would not recognize her daughter.