New Year's Resolutions: Life

And so another year starts. I can understand the need to party, the pagan urge (I'll hold on my usual comments about England really being a pagan country, with pagan festivals, tastes and traditions - it's a whole post by itself) to light up the darkness and race headlong into the gathering light, but some part of me wants the switch from year to year to be more considered, more thoughtful, more like Yom Kippur. For 15 years now, I have spent one significant day in early December thinking about what I've done in the year past and what I want from the year to come. But this year it seemed less possible (all hell breaking loose at work) and somehow less appropriate (the time for mourning is perhaps now past).

So to thinking. The year past. It's been quite an explosive one, on almost every front. Which for my own memory, I'm going to lay out in gloriously monocolour bulletpoint...

• I became poorer. My boss stopped my payrise, which meant that I was not just below the cost of living but positively going backwards from it. I stopped my lodger so I could move out and move on, but events have left me in an expensive house, not wanting to move yet because I'm waiting for the next (job) things to happen.
• I got away from said boss, but not without collatoral damage. I now have a great (if demanding) boss and an amazing job, but I'm still within the sphere of influence of the person who made my life and others' so difficult over the last two years, and after a couple of wonderful months working out of his way, he's back and has done all the damage that he can.
• I learnt the hard way about HR procedures. It's been a rough few months, but the beauty of always telling the truth is that there is only one truth (granted, there may be many perceptions of truth, but there is, generally, only one underlying truth), and it's very difficult for lies to be consistent. The beauty of bullies is that they rarely attack just one person; once one victim is dispatched, they quite often seek another then another. And the beauty of supposition is that people rarely have the gift of full empathy: often what a person says about you tells you much more about them than about yourself. That said, seeing how other people see you can be an enlightening and sometimes liberating experience too.
• I got way way too stressed about all the above, and let the rest of my life slide away a little too much. I've hardly spoken to many of my friends all year, haven't spent much time with my family (granted some of it is sailing round the world, but that's not the best of excuses now: there's still email). What is most difficult perhaps is that I became too stunned by my own troubles to be there for anyone else. Like my grandparents. My grandmother has Alzheimers, which has got worse this year. Apparently (and I say apparently because I haven't even stopped to visit them this year), she wakes up every morning as smart as she always was, but by the afternoon she's alone, afraid and in some dark place that even my grandfather, who's loved her for almost all their long life, can't bring her out of. He needs comforting, reassuring that life continues, but apart from the above couple of peaceful months, I haven't been able to do this.
• I tried to get another job. To be fair, I was very fussy about what I wanted; to be close enough to Hwsgo to become a short-distance couple at last but still do something useful and interesting; but I failed quite spectacularly to get a whole set of wonderful jobs. All of which had a common theme: I failed mainly because I'm not programming enough any more. I have the CV (she says modestly) of a tech god, but without regular practice, I can't easily back that up in an interview. I might once have written Trojan horses (only small funny local ones!) and obfuscated Perl in my sleep, but if I can't instantly explain SQL tree traversal, I'm not going to get the job that I want.
• I went to the gym again. Mainly because S got us a personal trainer so she could pass her fitness tests. I did go to the gym, but I didn’t take it as seriously as I should have done; I went for the training sessions, but gradually tailed off on the rest of my training. Stress again, despair, and interruptions from work, illness etc. And I hurt my back and shoulder; I’ve spent 6 months doing press-ups with an inflamed rotator cuff. Which is probably not good. I didn’t do much running – I always meant to, but somehow it was never quite the right time. I did a 5k race with Dad a couple of days ago, which proved that I can do it, so it’s much less of a worry now.
• I started to tidy up my life. I had no-buy months, and I have removed stackloads of stuff that I no longer need or - yes, and this is hard for a girl to admit - bought in error. I removed my ex's stuff from my garage after repeated attempts to get him to take it away followed by finding a mouse invasion that had headquartered within it. I wouldn't have believed that a mouse could eat a washer-dryer and a lawnmower, but I'm definitely convinced now. Anything rubber, anything soft plastic, anything ridiculously difficult to reach without disassembling a complex and heavy piece of machinery. This year, I gained a new-found hatred of small furry uncontained invaders, to go with my only other great loathe in life, namely container-based slugs.
• I had cold after cold, my back packed up, my mind started to go pzzt. All stress symptoms. I’m tired. I know I’m tired, and I know I need to fix that, but it’s difficult when you’re tired.
• I finally found a good place with Hwsgo. We are neither of us simple creatures, and even Shakespeare would have had a hard time following all the complications that we managed to knot ourselves in this year.

Things to do this year:

• More programming. If I want a tech job, I have to have tech credentials. It’s not enough (as it is unfortunately in the defence industry now) to be able to talk about how to build systems, and to outline their designs; I need to get myself back at the coalface of reality, making those difficult compromises between ought and can, even if it slows down my apparent output.
• More running. Starting with mapping out some genuine 5k runs from my house and from work. Then taking a set of kit to work, so I have no excuse not to run at lunchtime (it’s too cold… the car’s too far away). And putting myself in for some local 5k and 10ks, to find myself a local club that I actually want to go to (the town one here is mainly track and field, with no plodding road runners at all).
• More gym. Which is a difficult one: get a cheap subscription to the company onsite gym, or continue very occasionally attending an expensive one. Okay, that’s no contest. Company gym it is. Gyms are strange places. You can dress them up, dress them down, put in pretty machines and nice staff, but in the end it’s all about you and your willingness to keep repeatedly pulling down a difficult weight. Kinda like life really: you can dress it up all you like, but in the end it’s all about heart.
• Do a job I love for people I can trust. Or at least people I can trust to not cause as much damage as I’ve seen in the last couple of years.
• Move house to somewhere smaller and less dark. This has been waiting on my job for the past few months (waiting for a new one to move to, and waiting out what's happened at work), but I need to set a deadline now. I want to move out of this house by April 2009. Even if I don't get another job by then, or am still stuck in limbo here, I'm going to move anyway. Even if that means being somewhere temporary for a while.
• More tidying. Shrink down the number of my possessions. Hwsgo pointed out this morning that although I appear to have lots of shoes, I don't have many good ones (the Russian hooker comment about the J-Los was erm - possibly appropriate). I would, optimally, like to be able to fit all my basic possessions into one room of my house. Books, cd, clothes, detritus: I have too much of each and I need to deal with that.

Happy New Year

So I just lost a job opportunity that I really really wanted; panicked and fluffed the second interview. It's rough, but that's life. But you know what? I am tired of checking what I say and think and do all the time, tired of working in places that beat down their staff but expect miracles from them anyway. So I say stuff the world, I'm off. It may be the most stupid thing I've ever done, but I'm going to follow my heart and do what I love instead of what pays the bills. And what I really love is building systems. Top down designs to nuts and bolts twiddly bits, and out to the interface and user needs too. It really shouldn't be much to ask, that I can build stuff that's useful, but it seems to be. And when it's got to the stage where I'm fighting personal politics by day then trying to find time to go home and relax by building stuff at night, then something is deeply terribly wrong. So I have a plan. It's not going to make me popular, but it suits me better than becoming a lesbian lumberjack in Peru. Onwards... oh, and Happy New Year - may all your choices be both courageous and right for you this year.

On Being Nice

I’ve decided to be more balanced in my posts. Nicer. Lately, I’ve caught myself being automatically cynical, and I’m not sure I like that. F’instance… Dutch cuisine. Now some people (and I’m looking at you, anonymous), would argue that this is an oxymoron, that a nation that revels in deep-frying almost anything possible, although possible not quite as much as Glaswegians (haggis, Mars bars, granny’s underwear), couldn’t possibly have cuisine, and that the strength of the local beer can be directly related to the local croquette density (or whatever those horrible fried sandwich thingies are called).

See that – an almost-perfect example of why I think I’m way too cynical. I’m bitching about a nation that thinks a stein is an acceptably small beer measure, a place that produced the chap who told me to chill out and stop working whilst I ate earlier, a city where the cookies that come with your coffee can be especiaaaaally niiiiicccce (No, not Glasgow, although I’m sure that’s possible in some of the artier pubs there too).

So lets start again. I will, for at least as long as I can remember, attempt to be more pleasant in my posts. To see the good side of things, the hopeful in everywhere, but – and this is the difficult part – without being too hopelessly optimistic about life, the universe and human nature. To just be. And see. And comment as fairly and positively as I can. This probably won’t outlast Christmas, so grab it whilst you can.

So. Holland, Den Nederlanden, the place with all the windmills: what can I say (without ranting). Several of the people are nice. The beer is plentiful, drinkable and comes in big glasses that make you feel 3 again (the glass, not the beer: I’m not recommending that 3-year-olds drink here). Some of the Old Master art is stunningly good, ranging from almost-photographically perfect to capturing a mood, a soul and a time in one flat space. There’s some good modern art in Den Haag’s galleries, and some of it is set in stunning old formal rooms, all tapestries of wildly-coloured birds and crafted wood with no clothes on. It’s easy to find water, even in unexpected places (including lawns, which must be keeping the mole population down beautifully). It still has enterpreneurs who believe in new red-lit hotel lobbies despite the credit crunch. And. Erm. The tulips are cute. Can I have a gold star now please?

Brrr...

So I'm now midway through a particularly brutal working fortnight of playing expert in half a dozen subjects and trying hard to stay on the bucking bronco that's standing in for my normally placid schedule. But I had most of the weekend off so I won't complain about working conditions etc., at least not til I've finished the next set of meeting notes.

Today I genuinely think that I have nothing to say. Which, in the style of most bloggers, is really not going to stop me from saying that nothing in as much excruciating detail as I possibly can. So fact 1: I'm now out of Baileys, that deceptive fluid that cleverly disguises alcohol as christmas-pudding sauce. And fact 2: I'm worked off my feet, my house is in chaos, but I'm still managing to float around on a contentedly happy cloud. I appear to have discovered (without any conscious effort) the secret of being negatively depressed. As in the opposite of depressed: not just happy, but positively blissful without any conscious effort on my part. Maybe it's a karma thing: several years of depression have just magically gone into reverse and I'm about to spend years sporting a soppy grin. Maybe the thing that soaked up all my seratonin suddenly started rejecting it and leaving way too much of it floating round my endocrine system. And before anyone points out the Baileys, this is a sober thing too (and there wasn't that much left in the bottle). It's not love because there's been plenty of time to acclimatise to that lately; whatever it is, it feels good and I am very glad and deeply happy (maybe that's seratonin etc etc) that it's happening to me. Random whittering over. Roger and out etc. etc.

How to do life - the video

I have a small plumbing problem to fix. So, since I was armed only with my laptop and a little light insomnia, I looked it up on the internet. And found a lovely little site - videojug - with helpful tips and videos on all the things your Dad would tell you if it was sociable to call and ask him about pipework at midnight. I like. I may even have to invent some problems to see if there are video-based fixes for them...

Life plan for November

Things have been a little out of synch of late. So it's time to revive the life plan again.

Sleep is a given. I need 7.5 - 8 hours a day to function normally, and I wake up at 7am on the dot every day. So bedtime just fixed itself at 10:30pm. And tracking back from there I could spend half an hour reading before I sleep every night, so physically going to bed should be at 10pm. Good. That bit's sorted. Now for the rest.

Work is also a given: 8 hours a day will happen (5 on Fridays), with a minimum half-hour lunchbreak every working day. If I build sorting-out-stuff-for-tomorrow into my evening routine, I can get to work (cycling) by 7:30am. Which means that I can leave at 4pm if I want. So work from 7:30am (with a slip to 8am if needed) and leave between 4 and 5pm. I used to spend half an hour every morning on life maintenance (washing up, laundry, sorting through bills sort of stuff) before work because that was when I was most awake and most likely to actually do it. Maybe I'll try that again too. So life 7:15-7:45, work at 8am, leave at 4:30pm; I'll give that a go and see if the life maintenance slot is constructive or destructive.

Which leaves a half-hour lunchtime (20 minute run, 10 minute shower or 30 minute walk in the sun sounds good at the moment; with a walk to the bank or shops once a week on my rest day) and from 5pm (once I've got home) til 10pm every evening. 5 whole hours! Every day! What have I been doing with myself? Well, extra work, stressing and watching television for a start. The extra work can stay, but only if it's built into those hours. The stressing and television can go. This month, I am not going to watch television on my own. It's okay if I'm with someone else and we're doing it as a social activity, but I'm not going to do it on my own. And I keep saying that, I have half a chance of not needing to cut the plug off the thing to make it happen. I've also been going to the gym in the evenings. Not nearly enough though: our almost-daily sessions have withered down to once a week with our personal trainer, followed almost inevitably by an evening of slobbing out feeling tired or eating out until we're stuffed. This too must stop: I need to get a lot more stern about my gym routine. Starting with getting my frozen shoulder fixed so I don't break myself when I get it back together. So. Head for the gym at 4:30 every night. If there's a class (Thursday) then work in the gym lounge until the class starts; if there isn't then train from 4:45 to 5:45 and get home by 6:15.

So I have up at 7 for half hour of me-maintenance, cycle to work by 8, light exercise (run/walk) lunchtime, leave work at 4:30; gym from 4:45 to 5:45, home by 6:15, bed at 10, sleep at 10:30. That's a structure; now for the plan.

Plan 1: cook weekday meals in advance unless there's a special reason to cook fresh. On Sunday nights (yes, I've noticed that this is one), sort out my clothes for the week, plan out the week's meals and cook something up for at least 3 days. This means that I can pitch in from the gym, rev up the microwave and be fed by 6:3o most days. Leaving 3 1/2 hours of time to do the longer-term things.

Plan 2: decide on my next career path and go for it. Spend 2-3 hours a night reading, writing, coding, whatever it takes to head in that direction. Allow for one evening off a week; in practice this means that I have 10 hours basic study time a week, and must use the rest of my time as carefully as I can. And work to a schedule. 10 hours is not a lot of time to spare, so I need to use it wisely. I may even have to take some of my time off (I have 6 days to take before the end of November) to accelerate this plan a bit.

Plan 3: declutter. Make a list of useful things to do with that half hour, and concentrate on reducing the number of non-core things that I have to see or think of every day. This too will help... less stuff means less stuff to put away, less stuff to think about, less stuff to pack up and go.

Plan 4: don't be upset if the plan gets disrupted. It happens. Absorb the interrupt and get on with the plan.

Life. Prrr. Grrr. Prrr.

It's been a while. Nearly three months in fact. Which probably merits a smidgeon of explanation. It's just life. Some very good things have happened to me, mostly involving slobbing out with a particularly wonderful-frustating-incredible-annoying individual, and one of the memories I will hold forever in my heart is simply being together on a sunny afternoon in Paris, watching the lime leaves tumble down as the ugliest boats in the world pootled by. And some very bad things have happened too, mostly involving individuals who to survive in one arena have felt the need to destroy the one person who stands in their way - er me, in case you haven't guessed. So between legal tiptoeing and my life being engulfed in one long firefight, between trying so hard to be normal throughout this time and the practical love of my loved ones, there hasn't been much room for anything else.

It's been a horrid time, but. And it's a big but. Indeed a hippo-sized 'but'. I have learnt so much and have been forced to think so much. To take risks, to reach out, to consider the less-thinkable, to go places that I would maybe not dare from within my comfortable suburbanizing life (it's my verb, I can do what I want with it. Ed). And I've found the courage to face the loss of everything material in my life and realise that it signifies - well, quite a lot, but by no means everything. And I've made friends again with my past self, the S that would stand up and fight for her right to be, that considered injustice and hazard and risk then waded on in anyway because making just one little bit of the world (and occasionally surprisingly some quite big bits of the world) better was more important than psychological safety. But don't mistake this for rashness. The trick to risk (as my very learned friend might say) is to understand the cost, understand the odds, estimate the returns and *then* decide what to do. And the beauty of liars and bullies is that the first have to remember more than one truth at a time (which is difficult and will almost always eventually fail and not in a small way), and the latter only survive if they have victims.

And speaking of which, something quite amazing happened today. I was bullied every day in my mid-teens. Twice a day every day going to and from school; more if they could catch me in-between. It got more than a little wearing; I can vaguely remember doing exams and O levels, and my first snog outside the maths classroom (oh, and some serious research into the linguistic origins of Dorset placenames and the note structures in Belshazzar's Feast and lots of other interest things), but most of my school memories are of ridicule, damage, fear and the feel of rosethorns in my back whilst a much older boy hit me from above. And behind all this was one girl, one person I'd stopped bullying a friend in primary school years earlier (girls are wierd: they immediately became friends and ignored me completely) and who'd seen an opportunity when I joined a new school on my own at 14. Oh, the amazing thing? She's contacted me. Which given I've changed my name and moved from place to place for most of my adult life must have taken a not insignificant amount of detective work. 10 years ago, M tried to apologise to my mother (who responded with the maternal version of 'sod off'), and maybe just maybe she's feeling the need to tidy her feelings now. I've sent a not-unfriendly note back; we'll see what develops from here. The curious thing personally is that, despite the effects of what she did, I feel no malice at all. Not even the psychologically-buried variety. Not a smidge. I feel sad for the child that I was and the child that she was (she'd moved school because she herself had been bullied - mother dated headmaster, 'nuff said), but there's no anger or pain there anymore. If she needs closure and I can give it, then I will. I suspect we could even, in the right circumstances, become friends. But the most curious thing is that I find myself now, 25 years later, in exactly the same situation. Except the thing at stake isn't my exam grades (I passed, but didn't get the 14 A*s that were predicted; that's still a big thing to employers even now) but my livelihood. And again I have a scared little girl with a powerful gang of friends shoving me into the rosebushes because it's easier than facing up to and living with her own self (which probably isn't as bad as she secretly fears). I still live with the effects of the first girl - the lost opportunities, the life I didn't have (not that that's so terrible; I had a pretty good alternative one instead, just one with less easy opportunities) - and I need to deal with the second before that too gets out of hand. After all, I'm not sure that I have 25 more years to spare on the effects of this one. That said (and like buts, there is always a 'that said'), a disaster is always a thinly-disguised opportunity for those who have the courage and the heart to take it. So onwards. And a little more blogging this time.