I’ve been off work this week relaxing after my birthday on Saturday. My initial intention was to spend the week catching up on a few things I’d let slide, and do as much writing as I could. Things haven’t really worked out that way, and to be honest I’m quite glad that’s the case.
The Sunday after my birthday I was completely exhausted and so spent the day lounging around in the flat, watching TV, and trying to hold the hangover at bay. I’d already known that it was going to be a quiet day so I had tried to avoid making any plans, and it worked out quite well.
My thought was that Monday would be the day I started getting things done, and when it arrived I woke up at the time I would normally get up for work. I wasn’t going to go crazy and get stuck straight into everything so I grabbed a book, and wandered to my nearest Starbucks for a coffee to ease into my day. That turned into four hours relaxing and reading.
I hadn’t realised just how badly I needed an extended break from work, and from running around like a loon with my days crammed from beginning to end. I was enjoying the chance to relax and not worry about anything, and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to take this week and just enjoy myself.
I came back to the flat and re-wrote my to do list for the week. If it wasn’t important, it got moved to the bottom of the list. I had decided this entire week was going to be a chance to fully recharge my batteries and take some time for myself. This has been a busy year so far at work, and there was a spell when I was lucky if I managed to get a full day away from the office. So here I was with a whole week where I didn’t have to worry about it anything at work, where I didn’t have to care about checking my emails all the time, or use my laptop at all for that matter. It was an appealing thought.
I unplugged myself for the week.
These days it’s difficult to be fully unplugged, especially because of my iPhone, but I had decided that unless I really needed something, then the laptop was going to stay at home, switched off, and sitting on my desk. With the exception of a few times I had to check my bank accounts, and the ten minutes when my flat mate asked me to print something for him, this is the first time the laptop has really been on.
I’ve caught up on some reading, I’ve done a fair bit of cooking, I’ve gone to the cinema, and I feel so much better for it. The plan is to stick with this scenario for today and tomorrow, and then on Sunday catch up with a few things before getting back into work mode for Monday morning. I imagine it’s going to be a busy time when I get back on Monday so I’m doing all I can to forget about that until Sunday evening.
There’s a work’s drinks thing happening tonight, but until then I’m going to head out to Starbucks with my book as I’ve done almost every day this week, and I’m going to have a coffee and read for a while. Then I’ll come home and cook an early dinner before going along to the monthly drinks.
I’ve really enjoyed this last week, even if I didn’t get a third of the things I wanted to do before it began done. It’s been exactly what I needed. It’s just a shame it’s coming to an end.
Today is my 30th birthday.
I’ve spent the day out playing pool with my Dad, wee Sisters boyfriend, Mark, and my flatmate, Keith. We ended up playing doubles where it was me and my Dad against Keith and Mark. The Hamilton’s versus the other guys. My Dad and I managed to win the series by a single game. Afterwards we all headed back to the flat for a drink.
We’re still in the flat at the moment and were halfway through a shit ton of beer and our second bottle of port. I’ll be heading out to meet some friends in about half an hour at which point I full expect to fall over. This birthday isn’t going exactly as I’d imagined, not that that’s a bad thing.
So far 30 is quite fun
It’s been a four day week at work. I’m halfway through day three. I have to ask; why the hell does this week feel like it’s taking twice as long as normal? That it’s only early afternoon on the Thursday is simply unbelievable. I imagine this week has seemed slow to me since I had a four day weekend last week, and I’m of work all next week. It makes these few days a small busy period of work sandwiched in between two extended periods of downtime. Even though I realise that, there’s still no need for this week to feel quite as long as it has. It’s just not right.
This has been the laziest weekend I’ve had in months, if not this entire year.
As I’ve been working a crazy amount this year, and most of my weekends have involved work in some form or another, I made the decision that this weekend was going to be one where I completely stepped away from as much as possible and recharged my batteries. I spent Friday doing a few things that I’d let slide over the last few weeks, such as getting a haircut, and going to the supermarket to buy a huge amount of food for the rest of the month. Friday evening found me at my friends place playing the XBox 360 on a MASSIVE TV, and then after dinner we decided to play a little bit of Lord of the Rings Risk. I had my ass handed to me so we won’t be talking about that part of the evening ever again.
I woke up late on Saturday and even after I was awake it took a great effort for me to actually get out of bed. I lay there for hours reading, and it wasn’t until I realised it had passed noon that I decided to get up. I spent the day cooking and watching the new Doctor Who special (pretty good), and the second part of the Red Dwarf special (I’ll talk about this one after the third part this evening). I found myself lounging on the sofa, while rebuilding my flatmates laptop and reading with the TV providing background noise for the evening.
Today has been even lazier, if that’s possible. I slept late again, and have spent my day so far cooking lunch, and chatting with my flatmate. We are about to get a little more active though. We’re about to walk up to the cinema to see Let The Right One In. It’s a film Ross has talked about since he saw it at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and has been excitedly waiting on it getting it’s full cinema release.
I have a few things to do tomorrow that should kick start me back into some form of motivation and get me back up to speed for work on Tuesday. However, until then I’m going to enjoy the nice weather, and relax as much as I possibly can.
Working in IT comes with various benefits, and just as many drawbacks outside of the office. You have the ability to fix pretty much any problem that arises in your own home setup, whether it’s computer related or not. We tend to have a desire to figure out how things work, and a problem solving nature due to the way most of our brains are wired.
The issue with this is when you get the standard call that goes along the lines of: “My pc stopped working. When are you off work? Can you come have a look at it?” The caller in these instances is usually friends or family which adds a certain level of pressure to say yes. It’s not something that bothers me if it’s a one off and it can save the person a fortune. It does get on my nerves when that person begins to take advantage of your generosity.
It hasn’t happened to me in a while because I consider my free time very valuable, and charge accordingly. Yep, I charge my friends and family for IT Support. Not a lot, and sometimes it’s as simple as a bottle of wine or two, depending on the problem, and the person. The reason I started doing that is a few years ago there was a member of my family who decided that I was their personal IT Department and would call with the most trivial questions, usually at night or on the weekends when I was trying to forget about work. So I lost it, and said every time I helped them it was going to cost them at least £50. Lets just say the stupid calls stopped very quickly after that.
I know that if I get a phone call now from anyone it’s because they’ve actually tried to sort it out themselves usually and the problem is beyond their knowledge, or something they just wouldn’t think about. This means I don’t get hassled too often with this sort of thing, but on the flip side of that now is every time I do get called it means I’m going to have to spend a few hours looking at it.
Take this evenings little technological crisis for example. My flatmate was sitting on the other sofa and started swearing. He looked over at me, and asked what it meant if his screen went totally blue, but filled with white writing – ah the good old Blue Screen of Death – then restarted. I walked over to find it trying to do a memory dump, and then rebooting itself before going through the process again, and again.
“Here comes a long night of trying to fix this bloody thing” popped into my head uninvited.
After about half an hour of trying to get it sorted it became pretty clear that it was totally fucked, and needed to be completely wiped and rebuilt. Even it’s recovery partition – It’s a Lenovo laptop – was damaged. So there was nothing I could do tonight. It does mean getting recovery disks sent out and then rebuilding it at a later date.
It’s not the end of the world, and to be honest it shouldn’t take that long to fix when the disks arrive, but it is pretty annoying that even when I’ve finished work, I’m still working. IT skills come in handy but at the same time they’re a major annoyance. Although I would rather have these skills than not, regardless of the hassle they bring with them.
It would appear as though I’m beginning to catch another cold. I noticed the scratchy throat and slightly congested feeling creeping up on me at the beginning of the week, but it seemed to disappear on Thursday. I was completely run down yesterday, but that was more to do with the hangover than anything else.
Today brought back the congested feeling, with bouts of sneezing thrown into the mix. I don’t feel unwell, so its not a cold that’s going to stop me doing anything. Its more of a head cold that’s leaving my brain a little foggy, and is more irritating than anything.
There’s a few things I can do that usually speed up the recovery from these bugs. Firstly, I’m going to need another giant mug off coffee. Then there’s a fruit juice stall called Juiced Up in Ocean Terminal that I’ll be paying a visit too. Then later tonight I’m going for a 10k run. That may or may not help, but if it doesn’t kill me at least I’ll have gotten some exercise in this weekend.
