It's funny how one can make a decision and suddenly find blockages disappearing. Having decided that I was going to take the learning and run, my work/life balance seems to be offering change that I could not have foreseen. In my last post, I had been outlining the difficulty I found fitting in writing - my own writing, that is - during a hectic week, resulting in my plan to drop out of the OU course once I'd received my mark for my play assignment.
Yesterday, whilst discussing the new Single Point of Contact (commonly known as SPoC - I've always loved Star Trek!) coming into force at work on Monday, requiring new shift hours being put in place, my boss offered me a 4-day working week. Instead of 8.30 - 5.00 with an hour for lunch Monday to Friday, I could work 8.00 - 6.00 with 35 minutes for lunch Monday to Thursday or Tuesday to Friday. Just when I was lamenting my lack of time, I'm handed an extra day in my week - and a non-working day at that. Maybe Father Christmas does exist after all!
During this meeting, I was also made to face one of my failings - stubborn pride. I've had a difficult relationship with one of my work colleagues - not entirely unjustified, I might add. One tends not to take to a person who, on their first day back in the office after being off sick for 10 months, finds new colleagues in place (in place for only two weeks, so still a touch nervous and unsure of themselves) and ignores them. After two hours of this non-communicative stranger sitting at the desk behind me, I turned and introduced myself. I found out that she was my team lead counterpart. This behaviour was not confined to me. She treated the other new members of staff in similar vein. I was astonished. I'd never come across such a passive-aggression before. When also liberally littered with bouts of crying, unexplained disappearances from her desk, an apparent inability to answer a telephone because she 'couldn't manage it today', or type 'my hands hurt/eyes are blurred', further frequent sick days and a complete lack of team spirit or consideration for work colleagues, I mounted my high horse, determined never to acknowledge her fey, woebegone languishing and spoke to her only when necessary. And even then, my words were laced with so much ice, I'm surprised she didn't go off sick with frostbite. Her performances caused eye-rolling, laughter and resentment in equal measure amongst other members of staff. One of the women would throw her hand to her forehead and utter an wan 'Ooh!', like a 1930s black-and-white film damsel-in-distress when one of these 'I'm not well!' acts began.
I should have risen above it and tried to maintain some sort of communication. I'm a grown woman. I should not have started to find petty ways to distance myself and freeze her out. An atmosphere pervaded the office when she did (occasionally) turn up for work. Mea culpa.
It has made me reflect on other places where I have galloped my pride down a dead-end street - the only way out being a volte-face and return journey with my dignity crushed underfoot. Its never pretty and the only person who ends up with sleepless nights and indigestion while they dither at the nub-end of the cul-de-sac contemplating the inglorious retracing of steps is me.
I'm not aiming for sainthood, but I would like to be a better person. I wonder if I'll learn from my mistakes.
Saturday 14 January 2012
Friday 6 January 2012
It's Been So Long!
I am shamed and saddened. I logged on and read the date of my last post. 30th October! Good heavens! However, this realisation has only added to the nagging voice that has been whispering in my ear for a few weeks now. Let me explain.
The new job is great (really, I love it - much to the surprise of my new boss, who raised her eyebrows and said 'Really? Oh, good.' - strange reaction. Still ...), but time consuming. I'm now up at 6.00 in order to leave the house at 7.45 (I know, but it takes me a while and a bucket of tea before I could contemplate even showering safely, let alone driving), not returning until some time between 5.45 and 6.00 in the evening. After getting changed, having a quick shufty at my emails and maybe a FB flick to see if anyone has posted anything I should know about (this also includes my writing group, so it's not all froth), it's probably about 6.30/6.45 and if I'm to have any chance of eating without subsequently going to bed with indigestion, then I need to start making dinner. Meal cooked, eaten and washed up, it's probably now between 8.00 and 8.30 and quite frankly I'm only fit for gawping mindlessly at the TV whilst attempting to keep my eyelids open until 10.00 when I can go to bed without feeling like a very sad person indeed. (And the first person to shout 'You're getting old!' will be taken off the Christmas card list forthwith!) This last often fails, I must add and the fine dramas screened at 9.00 are often watched in five to ten minute chunks with breaks in consciousness littered throughout. Very annoying and thank heavens for Sky+.
In my lunch break at work (when I get one) I try to find a quiet, secluded spot to write or read around my OU work - up until yesterday, when my assignment was sent in, this was plays and playwrighting. Other than sitting in the toilet (the smell is distracting and people still insist on coming in!) or the closed down cafeteria (just plain creepy) quiet, secluded spots are difficult to find in a city hospital.
The above has been written neither to elicit sympathy, nor as an excuse, but simply as a statement of fact.
It means that my writing and studying time is, realistically, reduced to weekends (the two days in which I also need to squeeze in household chores - limited, admittedly - and having some sort of social life). Which, in turn, means that time to write anything for pleasure alone is ... non existent!!
Q.E.D.
I haven't even mentioned the fact that the Proofreading and Copy Editing course that I signed up for in the summer has got as far as me sending in my first (mock) assessment - which received a creditable (apparently) B-, but has not been looked at since.
Seeing as Santa didn't deliver the extra two days in the week I requested (non-working days, obviously), I have had to re-evaluate my time management strategy. My thinking has gone as follows:
Parts of the OU course left to complete: Assignment 3 - write a tract on the benefits of critique and how it can change the way you view your work; Assignment 4 - write a proposal on something on want to write (!); Assignment 5 - write a 2500 word short story or a play (can't remember the running time); Assignment 6 - write a first attempt at the thing you proposed in Assignment 4; EMA - write the thing you proposed in TMA4 and stabbed at in TMA6 ie 4000 word short story, start of novel or 30 minute play. (Poetry is also included, but ... never again.)
Assignment 3 - if I don't know that by now, then what have I been doing on my 3 on-line forums and at my writing group for the past 18 months? Do I really need to explain it to you and be marked on it? Assignment 4 - yeah, I have proposals running through my head all the time, I just need time to sit and write some of them. Not having OU work to do would assist greatly in achieving this. Assignment 5 - nuff said, read previous. Assignment 6 - yup called a first draft, read previous. EMA - can I just get on with writing what I want to write, PLEASE!!
Proofreading course - possible source of lucre to either prop up writing career or subsidise part time work so that I can write. Also may give valuable connections in publishing world. Currently languishing untouched.
What would it be more important for me to finish? Add to that the fact that I want to stop fannying about and get on with writing now.
Where do we think the axe is going to fall?
The new job is great (really, I love it - much to the surprise of my new boss, who raised her eyebrows and said 'Really? Oh, good.' - strange reaction. Still ...), but time consuming. I'm now up at 6.00 in order to leave the house at 7.45 (I know, but it takes me a while and a bucket of tea before I could contemplate even showering safely, let alone driving), not returning until some time between 5.45 and 6.00 in the evening. After getting changed, having a quick shufty at my emails and maybe a FB flick to see if anyone has posted anything I should know about (this also includes my writing group, so it's not all froth), it's probably about 6.30/6.45 and if I'm to have any chance of eating without subsequently going to bed with indigestion, then I need to start making dinner. Meal cooked, eaten and washed up, it's probably now between 8.00 and 8.30 and quite frankly I'm only fit for gawping mindlessly at the TV whilst attempting to keep my eyelids open until 10.00 when I can go to bed without feeling like a very sad person indeed. (And the first person to shout 'You're getting old!' will be taken off the Christmas card list forthwith!) This last often fails, I must add and the fine dramas screened at 9.00 are often watched in five to ten minute chunks with breaks in consciousness littered throughout. Very annoying and thank heavens for Sky+.
In my lunch break at work (when I get one) I try to find a quiet, secluded spot to write or read around my OU work - up until yesterday, when my assignment was sent in, this was plays and playwrighting. Other than sitting in the toilet (the smell is distracting and people still insist on coming in!) or the closed down cafeteria (just plain creepy) quiet, secluded spots are difficult to find in a city hospital.
The above has been written neither to elicit sympathy, nor as an excuse, but simply as a statement of fact.
It means that my writing and studying time is, realistically, reduced to weekends (the two days in which I also need to squeeze in household chores - limited, admittedly - and having some sort of social life). Which, in turn, means that time to write anything for pleasure alone is ... non existent!!
Q.E.D.
I haven't even mentioned the fact that the Proofreading and Copy Editing course that I signed up for in the summer has got as far as me sending in my first (mock) assessment - which received a creditable (apparently) B-, but has not been looked at since.
Seeing as Santa didn't deliver the extra two days in the week I requested (non-working days, obviously), I have had to re-evaluate my time management strategy. My thinking has gone as follows:
Parts of the OU course left to complete: Assignment 3 - write a tract on the benefits of critique and how it can change the way you view your work; Assignment 4 - write a proposal on something on want to write (!); Assignment 5 - write a 2500 word short story or a play (can't remember the running time); Assignment 6 - write a first attempt at the thing you proposed in Assignment 4; EMA - write the thing you proposed in TMA4 and stabbed at in TMA6 ie 4000 word short story, start of novel or 30 minute play. (Poetry is also included, but ... never again.)
Assignment 3 - if I don't know that by now, then what have I been doing on my 3 on-line forums and at my writing group for the past 18 months? Do I really need to explain it to you and be marked on it? Assignment 4 - yeah, I have proposals running through my head all the time, I just need time to sit and write some of them. Not having OU work to do would assist greatly in achieving this. Assignment 5 - nuff said, read previous. Assignment 6 - yup called a first draft, read previous. EMA - can I just get on with writing what I want to write, PLEASE!!
Proofreading course - possible source of lucre to either prop up writing career or subsidise part time work so that I can write. Also may give valuable connections in publishing world. Currently languishing untouched.
What would it be more important for me to finish? Add to that the fact that I want to stop fannying about and get on with writing now.
Where do we think the axe is going to fall?
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