Hello blog, hope you are keeping well. Its been a while … again … sorry. *hands over flowers and looks sheepish*.
Life is somewhat odd right now. 5 months and 10 days of unemployment marks the longest I’ve ever been as such since my student days. Thats not to say there’s nothing on the horizon. But there have been several things on the horizon, so far none of them came closer than that unfortunately.
The odd thing is not the ammount of time I have been unemployed; Its how quickly its gone by and how little I miss work. I’m fortunate in that we saved for this eventuality after I was made unemployed in a previous position a few years back. That saving has allowed us to live a normal existence on redundancy and eventually on our savings. In many ways this is a good thing, but in some it is bad in that it removes the pressure to actually go find a job.
So in those five months I have achieved, well very little really. I’m still trying to find some purpose and motivation. Doctors try and perscribe me tablets to take the edge of things and look at me with their “thats sad” face when I go for checkups. But the reality is that I’m mostly okay, I just lack direction and purpose. On the job front I’m still fighting hard for a Linux job. There have been offers and jobs in the last few months, but none that would not have crushed my soul within days. So to the savings and redundancy monies, I thank you.
One thing I am trying to do more is write, I used to be good at it. I still have that ever so active and “please wont you shut up now and let me sleep” voiceover in my head and an ability to escape into self made fantasy worlds on a whim. Getting into the habbit of documenting thoughts and ideas in a structured way is one of the hopes and aims both within and without this blog.
A second thing is reading. Outside of fantasy and sci-fi I cannot remember when I last sat and managed to read more than 20 minutes of a book at a time. My world is fractured and interupted by computers and scatalogical habbits at every turn. My first aim is one hour uninterupted technical reading. Beyond that we’ll see how that first hour goes. I am fractured into many slivers of concentration. Combining those shards into something resembling useful attention span is going to take time.
As for the title of this piece, we had snow last night. It didn’t settle but it looked beautiful reflected off a background of hill mist and the orange hallogen glow of streetlights. It made me smile and broke the routine of “not doing” for a short while.
