Lightbulb Moments

I actually wrote this post about three-four weeks ago. I got slightly distracted though and forgot to post it. I think I was planning on reviewing/proofing it but got side-tracked, and then with other things happening etc. I sort of forgot about it a bit ;)

Sorry I seem to have gone a bit quiet recently. Not sure why exactly :) As usual, I've still been reading other blogs even if I've not necessarily got around to commenting as much recently (e.g. Some of Northern Monkey's recent ones about her handbag and Valentine's Day made me laugh :) ).

Anyway, here it is :)
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I came home one evening earlier this week and turned on the light in the hall. I walked through to the living room, turned on the light there, only for the lights in both the hall and the living room to turn off. After a moment's confusion ("Why is it so dark? Did I forget to turn on the lights in the hall?"), I realised that neither the hall light nor the living room light worked. Further investigation revealed that the bedroom lights also did not work, however the kitchen and bathroom lights did. I guessed something had tripped the main fuse, reset it, and found one bulb in the living room had gone.

Later that same evening, the bulb in the bedroom also blew.

But that's not what this post is about. This is the yang to my earlier ying, the flip side of the coin, the counterweight.

Friday last week was one of those really shit days where it seems like everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. I was tired and exhausted, I felt crappy (I didn't even have a beer with me lunch ;) ), pissed off at myself by the fact that I hadn't been doing nearly enough work in weeks if not months (even considering the current circumstances), irritated that I had started 'losing' my evenings at home (things were untidy and/or messy at home), stressed at needing to arrange a meeting with a client to demonstrate what I'd been working on for weeks (and it should have been at least demonstrable weeks ago)... And then on top of that, due to a bizarre computer error in combination with the 'style' of thing I had been working on (unusually few backups), I ended up losing a few days worth of work on the thing I wanted to demonstrate! (Fortunately, I eventually remembered I had taken it home to do some work on at some point, and was able to restore the files from here - but for a couple of hours, it just reeeally wasn't what I had needed at that point)

I ended up having a damn good think about everything come the evening. At work, I've been very, very concious for a long time now that I have been doing a poor job (I want no comments or sympathy about this - regardless of anything else, I know I should have been doing better). I mean the thing is, I actually like my work and my job. I enjoy doing it. I've just not been able to focus.

I've annoyed with myself about this, because I know that I can be one of the best, most useful and productive people at the company. I have knowledge in some technical areas that far surpasses that of my colleagues, I learn quickly, and I take an interest in everything the company does, even if I am not directly involved. This makes me valuable at every stage of the process, from the design, through development and implementation, and then support. You would be surprised how many programmers do not know anything about computers, because they simply aren't interested.

I know I sound like I'm blowing my own trumpet a lot here and saying "I'm fantastic!", and to an extent, I am... Or at least, I was. I would say that in life, there are a lot of areas where I am "poor" to "below average". My ability with computers balances some of that out, and I recognised it early on. At the moment, the fact that I know there have been some days where I have really worked for perhaps half an hour in the whole day, and I know exactly how far I *should* have gone, just serves to irritate me more.

As others have said recently... I've lost my mojo.

On top of that, I realised that over the last few weeks, I've not really been doing anything in the evenings. My first month or so, I was really having fun... Cooking, cleaning, going for walks, playing a spot of a computer game, watching a film, going shopping, browsing beds or furniture... Recently, I'd got to the point where whilst I was still cooking (as opposed to just a microwave meal), it was usually 10pm by the time I had eaten, and I had no idea where the evening had gone. I think that at least some of that was spent pissing about on t'Internet for too long.

I also thought about my wife and our relationship. Or, even a relationship with anyone... I think I just need to forget about anything for a bit. Seek even more uncertainty than that I already had. Just to let go of anything I want to hold on to, to any degree, and be alone. Just... look inside to myself for a bit, really find out who and where I am.

I think (and hope) that a lot of these realisations served as somewhat of a kick up the arse :)

Work this week has been a bit of an uphill struggle. I'm not magically back at 100% yet (I am typing this at work now, for one thing...), but I think I've had an overall improvement in focus/concentration, and consequently overall output.

So, I've started on the blackjacks, am working towards the fruit salads, and perhaps after that will come the mojo ;)

(For those not in the know; Blackjacks, Fruit Salads and Mojos are all sweets - in ye olden days, mum would sometimes give me 10 pence to spend on some sweets at the newsagents or postoffice, and those were all in the 0.5p-2p sort of category :) )