roller coaster

trying to achieve stability / these days, when every weekday is an uphill challenge, it's difficult to think back to a time when I was relaxed about going into work ...

much has changed / it could be argued that the job I used to do no longer exists / computing is now ubiquitous / a new generation has grown up, taking for granted the world wide web, personal computers, and smartphones / this old dinosaur hasn't been able to find a niche in the ecosystem / of incident management systems, content management systems, e-learning, and managed desktops ...

is it a coincidence that variants of the word 'managed' appear so often in that last sentence ...

spring

amazingly, it isn't cold, outside / we seem to have waited a long time for spring to arrive / and we said that we would appreciate it (all the more) when it came ...

there is still an awful darkness, though / thankfully, the weekend has come / and I have two days / during which I don't have to go into work / but it is difficult not to think about it / and I reckon that before Monday morning, I do need to spend some time working / if only to try to achieve a good start to the week ...

brightness outside / less so inside / difficult to make any decisions, that aren't obvious / tired ...

open plan

at work / moved office / previously, shared with 3 others / now, around 127 ...

writing about it isn't going to change anything / I need to keep on working / probably until I'm 66 / it feels like a nightmare ...

better / at the weekend / not to think about it / instead (it's nice to be blogging, even if nobody reads this) ...

I'm reading (among other books) Richard Holloway's "Looking in the Distance" / does he believe (in the traditional, Christian sense), or doesn't he? / is he pretending not to? / or, has he really jumped ship (to use his own metaphor) ...

difficult

the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is always (for me) a strange one / compounded this morning when my daily (bible) reading notes looked forward to the resurrection (for me (again), the prevailing emotion of this particular day requires that when resurrection arrives, it is unexpected) / so / we know (because we've read the book (or seen the movie) before) that there is going to be 'a happy ending') / the hero doesn't stay dead ...

why did he have to die? usually, in movies, the hero appears to have died, but then an eye opens, and we realise that he's ok (or heroine, and she's ok) / in this case, we seem to be sure that, in fact, Jesus was dead when they laid him in a tomb ...

there seems to be unhappiness nowadays with the notion that Jesus died for our sins (as we have been taught) / because it implies an angry God / we would prefer a different interpretation / which allows God, even as Jesus cried out on the cross / to be loving (by which we mean gentle, I guess) ...

not my problem / I don't presume to teach / but I'd like to make enough sense of the whole thing to go on living / if that isn't too much to ask ...

blue

a statement ...

clinging on / just ...

actually

a good day / cut lots of grass / not too short, because this should be the last cut before the winter, and I'm sure that the grass does better if it hasn't been traumatised ...

powerful music

not my usual Sunday blogging haunt, but just to say that on Friday I was privileged to attend an event at Coda in Edinburgh / Karine Polwart has brought out a new CD, and was singing some songs / we were packed in like sardines / it was live music, in every sense ...

shopping

has to be done ...

pondering

fear, and faith / fear is unavoidable, natural / faith would seem to drive out fear / or is that a myth / david, facing goliath had faith in God, he also had a pretty good idea of what he was going to do, and would have been confident of his own ability to carry out his plan / you might almost say that his faith in God was incidental / in complete contrast to the situation some of us find ourselves in / we don't have a plan, we don't believe that we are capable, yet we are told to have faith in God ...

friday

one working day, then the weekend ...

nothing changes

for the better ...

it's wrong

I have Asperger's, I have difficulty socialising / but that's no reason to leave me on my own trying to do a job which requires (at least) two people ...

back to work

with a plan, if it goes pear shaped ...

demob happy

a whole week off / coming up ...

why

don't I just say that this is unacceptable / I'm being routinely left on my own to do a job which requires at least two people (it isn't just about the number of calls, it's about the fact that some of them are urgent, some require planning, most involve people who are for some reason upset) ...

downtime

really would have preferred not to be working to-day / but there would then be nobody in that office ...

lurgy

no longer struggling into work - let's see if a day at home helps ...

here

I didn't want to provoke a crisis / better (maybe) to be under par, but working, than to be at home, and to have twice as much to do to-morrow ...

sick

if I'm not better than this by to-morrow morning, then I shan't be going into work / even though there was only going to be the one of me there ...

eScape

it's tempting to contemplate a computer free weekend, but hardly practical, when calendars, timetables, bank accounts, and communication all seem to require internet access ...