Symbolic Forest

You know that feeling you get when you’ve been away for a few days? By the end of the holiday it feels as if you’ve been away from the office forever; but when you get back, hardly a thing has changed.

My desk still has piles of useless paperwork on it, and Big Dave is still stressing about the amount of work he has to do. It doesn’t help that he still keeps getting “help!” calls from random people when he’s in the middle of urgent work, of course. From his mother-in-law, for example, who this morning put Dave’s stepson’s new £250 mobile phone through the washing machine, and wanted to know how to fix it. A full cycle, apparently, although I’m not sure if it was a boil-wash. Big Dave’s advice: “put it in the airing cupboard for a bit, and whatever you do don’t tell him about it until you’re sure it’s knackered.”

In the meantime, I have a big pile of mundane and tedious things to do, which haven’t been done since before I went away. Updating all those files that need updating every few days but don’t work automatically. Generating nice reports for the management. Doing the inter-departmental billing run. All those jobs that really don’t need any brain, but which for one reason or another can’t be automated very well, because of all the exceptions and special cases that go against the rules. Why they fall on my shoulders to do, I’ve never been entirely sure – possibly in an attempt to persuade me to work out how they can be automated, in order to avoid boring myself into a coma. If only they were so boring that I could daydream at the same time; but they’re not, that’s why they need a human to do them.^*

This isn’t the sort of task, to be honest, that makes me sit and think “my god, I need another job.” At least this sort of task doesn’t involve inter-divisional politics, or any of the related nastiness. This is just the sort of task that keeps me bumbling away in “Room 3B, IT office” (as the new sign on the door almost says)^** wishing I could turn off my computer and go and do something more interesting instead.

* We’re talking about jobs like: reconciling our internal phone system’s billing reports with BT’s billing reports. Which is a hard job for a computer to do because their clocks aren’t synchronised, and they disagree on how long each call lasts. I could write a program that would match on the phone number first then look for fuzzy matches in the other fields, but for a job I only have to do once a quarter it’s not worth the effort.

** that’s one thing that’s changed whilst I was away, a new sign on the office door. I have thought about editing the IT building plans so it is actually called Room 3B, but haven’t got round to it yet. We already have our own room numbering system for some parts of the building, because when it was last rebuilt the Facilities Management office didn’t get around to telling us what the official room numbers were until long after we needed to number the rooms ourselves.

Keyword noise: automation, Big Dave, holiday, mistakes, office, paperwork.

Well, that was a good holiday. I’m back again, and the only dark shadow on the horizon is the thought of being back at the office tomorrow. There’s already one bad omen: getting home and opening my email, to discover some evil person has been sending out junk mail with my return address on it. Six thousand bounce messages were in my inbox and my spam folder, which leaves me wondering just how many emails did get through. If you’ve emailed me and I’ve deleted your mail by accident, I’m very sorry.

Keyword noise: email, holiday, junk, relaxation, spam.

And the year starts with a long pause, whilst I enjoy a bit of a holiday. It’s all very well taking time off work, but the real way to take a break is a sudden, unexpected trip to stay with someone who doesn’t have internet access.^*

We popped out to see a couple of local bands last night, in a pub just up the road from the Railway Museum. The pub was full of teenage emo kids in tight trousers, chains and handcuffs hanging from their belts and hair across their faces. I bet they’ve never actually used the handcuffs they all seem to have, any of them. Sitting there in plain trousers and a t-shirt, it made me feel rather old. Mind you, one of the bands seemed to take their fashion style^** from Simon Le Bon circa 1982, so they must have long memories too. They weren’t as good as the openers, who didn’t do anything more imaginative than late-80s hair metal, but did it well.

The main band weren’t bad for that sort of gig,^*** but they didn’t jump out at me. Their sound levels didn’t seem great, with the singers hardly audible. Maybe that’s the sound they were going for. The lead singer ran offstage and disappeared into the loo during the final song. I’m not sure if that was planned beforehand, or if he was just really, really desperate, and couldn’t wait another 32 bars. He waited until the music had died away, and emerged to a cheering crowd.

* If it hadn’t been sudden and unexpected, I’d have put some effort into writing blog posts in advance.

** but not the music

*** the sort where everyone in the audience was either a friend, or a friend of a friend.

Keyword noise: gig, holiday, live music, music, York, Yorkshire.

One year ago today, I wrote:

This post is the first post. The first real post on SymbolicForest.com

Yes, this site has been going now for a whole year. I haven’t quite managed the original target – a proper post every day – but the amount I have produced isn’t bad going.

From before day one, this site has promised “restlessness, whinging, perversity, opinion, and bad jokes.” I like to think that, over the year, it’s been borne out. I’m definitely still restless, still whinging regularly, and always tell bad jokes. My life, though, has changed a lot over the past year; I’m not sure how much of that has been reflected in my writing, but it has. I’ve found a new social scene, and made new friends. In fact, I’m writing this sitting in the living room of two friends I didn’t even know a year ago. I’m a lot more comfortable with who I am, even though I’m still finding new things out about myself all the time. I’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

I don’t know how my life is going to change in the next year. I know how I’d like it to go, but I have no way of knowing if it will. Change is going to keep happening, though, and I’m going to try and keep writing about it.

Keyword noise: anniversary, blogging.

Not just end of the week, but start of the holidays – I’ve got an entire week, and more, off work. Hurrah! I’ve been winding Big Dave up about it all day.

It seems, though, that half the office has all decided to take the same week off work. So Dave won’t have to worry too much about me being off; he should only have half as many stupid questions to answer anyway.^*

I don’t have any particular plans for the week. Tidy up a few things here and there. Go on the odd outing. But, most importantly, it’s a chance to rest a little. The universe has been far too nice to me in the past 7 days; something bad is bound to come along and hit me soon, and I will need a rest before I have to cope with it.

* Yes, I know there’s a flaw here – not everyone asks quite as many stupid questions. Some people are far, far worse than others.

Keyword noise: Big Dave, holiday.

Note to self: be more careful with the leftovers in future. Two day old Chinese food with prawns in isn’t good for my stomach, clearly. That was at least part of the reason for my absence over the past couple of days. There were other reasons, too, of course – when I wasn’t in bed or throwing up, I was travelling round half of Yorkshire, escorting kissograms and delivering cats. Despite my illness, despite still spending most of the weekend in bed, I didn’t get much sleep.

Keyword noise: Chinese, food, illness, leftovers, prawns, seafood, sickness.

Things that would make my life better:

• A better job^*
• Living away from the parents
• A social life that is closer to home
• A partner who, also, was reasonably close to home
• The self-belief to always do what I want to do.
• The wisdom to know what I need to do.
• And the self-confidence to be content with what I can do, rather than being disappointed at not doing what other people can.

This post was brought to you by Self-Reflective Lunchtime Breaks, Ltd – purveyors of angst to twentysomethings everywhere. Feel free to add further suggestions.

* but “better” is such a nebulous term there.

Keyword noise: angst, self-reflection.

As mentioned the other day, I spent most of the weekend at Caption, the annual small-press and self-published comic convention in Oxford. It wasn’t somewhere I’d visited before – I’m someone who looks on people who can draw properly with awe and admiration – but it turned out to be a nice day out. Held in a community centre which felt like an overgrown collection of church halls inside, it was a nice quiet relaxed event. “Ooh, it’s a bit quiet this year,” said the people I was with, who were veterans, but I didn’t mind that myself. It helped that it was on Cowley Road, which made it easy for us to pop out for a meal in the early evening, then nip back to the convention. And, unlike the centre of the city, Cowley Road isn’t completely flooded with tourists.

Keyword noise: Caption, comics, Cowley Road, indie, Oxford, self-publishing, small press, zines.

Yesterday, I mentioned in passing that my friend W’s birthday is upcoming; but it didn’t register that W’s birthday is today. So, if you’re reading, happy birthday!

(I don’t think W reads the site very often, but he has looked at it occasionally)

Keyword noise: birthday, celebration.

Sorry to be whining so much about work, but that’s all my mind’s been full of this week. The pressure is so draining, my mind feels numb and empty by the time I get home, and I have nothing else to write about. My mind feels numb most of the daytime too; it’s at the stage where I just sit down at my desk and blank for a couple of minutes until I remember where I am and what the next task is.

At least I’m off away again this weekend, so I should be able to put work out of my mind for a couple of days. I’m going to Caption, a convention for alternative, small-press and zine-style comics. It’s not a scene I know much about, but I am hoping to be educated.

This week I have mostly been obsessed by: Last.fm,^* the website that tells you what bands people are listening to. I’ve been refreshing it regularly just to check that it is correctly identifying which tracks I’m playing – it does sometimes not seem to recognise some obscure stuff.^** I’ll post the link to my profile here, when my profile has more on it. Hopefully it will lead to finding more music I don’t know much about. I am hoping to be educated.

I’ve also been listening over and over to the first album by The Pipettes, a 60s girl-band in modern indie clothing. Review to come when I have time enough to write it.

That’s all for this week, then; one more day of stress stress stress, then at 5pm I can zoom off down to Oxfordshire. And then I’ll come back on Monday all refreshed, hopefully there will be news of the cat, and I’ll be all ready for another week of stress to grind me down. Just maybe, too, I’ll have been educated.

* also known as Audioscrobbler, which always makes me think of The Box of Delights by John Masefield, in which “scrobbling” means “kidnapping”.

** Usually things from Fluxblog, whose mp3s also confuse my mp3 playing software – it can’t read the track length properly, and usually tells me that the file is thousands of hours long.

Keyword noise: Caption, comics, holiday, indie, overwork, Oxford, pressure, small press, stress, zines.