Come On Up To The House

In keeping with the recent post-lite few weeks, this is only very brief. I genuinely don’t have the time to blog, a malaise of very few actual bloggers, one imagines. But it’s true: my days are full of work, I don’t have time to take lunch, I work a bit late, I’m tired when I get in, I have other things to do and bang, no blog. But it doesn’t mean things don’t go on still…

• I’ve just started reading the pleasingly dense The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. My headphones being broken, a repeat of my first encounter with this Churman seems unlikely, but again it seems an interesting and thought-provoking read and I look forward to it. This on completing the tour de force that is Cryptonomicon, from which I’m still reeling.
• Work still stressful, including specifically not being blamed for an unspecified error - we’ll see how that pans out, but I’m still eminently happy with not having gone for the job before.
• I got an Olde Wood Green book! Thanks!
• Most importantly, I’m contemplating big deals all to do with the news, the local area and so on. You’ll have heard of Thursday last’s spate of stabbings in London. These are becoming as old hat as news of bombs in Baghdad, or man down in Helmand. But in a rare turn, I knew the man who was stabbed in Tottenham. Not well at all, but I knew him by name, he knew me, we would have talked in the street - in Aldi even. So I’m extremely saddened by Gennar Jaronis’ death, seemingly in a fight in the squat he called home. I’m saddened that he had to live in such conditions, and that in the time i knew him I saw him turn from optimistic, hard-working man, to alcoholic. i want to do something, for the likes of Gennar, his friends, those like him, and also those who the news marginalises as statistics - the assumed perpetrators of these crimes, the yoot of today. What can I do? I have ideas, and I have to see what I can do, but there must be something. Anything would be good. Further news as events warrant.

Ooh. I’m sleepy. And confused: for possibly the first time in my life I didn’t have any substantial food all day (pastries don’t really count, I think) and I still wasn’t hungry come teatime. It didn’t stop me eating like I know I should - nay, must! - but that was a little disconcerting. Must be to do with the somewhat frantic of problem-solving, with-childish-superiors-dealing, and Turk-pacifying. My role in life is curious. Today has been a long, hard slog, and buy the whole time, and yet, perversely I finish it listening to Gangster’s Paradise (downloaded via Skreemr, potentially the greatest thing since the Hype Machine), and various other oldie hip hop. Loving its work.

Can’t type much more, need rest, but really, it is tricky.

It turns out that avoiding wasting time on the internet is easier when you have about half as much time as you need to do the volume of work you need to. I’m sure this is some sort of fairly basic management principle, although, if you did employ the actual right amount of people to do the job, facebook and a hefty proportion of blogs would go out of business asap.

My updates are pretty sporadic here because work is taking over not only work time, but outside time as well, and so inessentials like the internet are first against the wall, sadly. Just as I was getting into it as well (yes, thank you tre, your input, I acknowledge it).

That said, I don’t really mind - I like blogging, and since pretty much no-one reads this, it’s a good place to jot down thoughts and remind me of things - but I’m at work to work, funnily enough, and if my day is filled completely with work, then so be it. Evenings (although those are becoming precious few, especially in the next couple of weeks) are good for this, and along with my web 2.0 mentor, I’m exploring the usefulness of del.icio.us and StumbleUpon - the latter is looking good stuff, i’ve already found (and been cleverly forwarded) a bunch of cool stuff. Lots of maps, and goodness knows, I love maps.

So, I’ll try and keep up this blogging lark: today I’ve been mostly working on the usual self-improvement: weekly resolutions and the like, they’re starting to add up, and I like it. It’s making me a bit… well, better, I guess.

Recently, as part of my drive to become a Better Person, I have been making a number of resolutions, promises to myself, and the like. Some of these go well, some less so, but my latest, which I have been trying out all morning, seems like the hardest.

You’d think it was simple: not use the internet while working. Aside from a quick Twitter-shaped blip, the only web access this morning has been to email a few times, and only to one person. I’ve got plenty of work done, I’ve had to be a bit more disciplined rather than the “one work email, one personal email, one webcomic” cycle.

So no actual, baby on ceiling type withdrawal symptoms, but it’s pretty hard going. Which is an awful indictment of my approach up until now. If I were to break down the number of hours spent doing work as opposed to faffing about, I’d probably be pretty embarassed. I don’t suppose there’s some sort of monitoring programme out there to tell me? (Actually, there probably is - reading Cryptonomicon is making me paranoid).

So: onward and upward - soon I’ll be the T2000 of office staff, and I absolutely, definitely will not stop until all the emails are done.

I’m here alone, at work. I’m in the office and my last colleague has just left. I’m staying out of choice, to do something that has to be done, in order to tick something off my Remember The Milk list. I am officially sucked into the working life, the office sphere, the world of homogeneity and bland, comfortable ease. But not for long! I’m setting my sights on a better world, academia, non-office, beautiful thing.

I’ve been working in civvies today, rather than the smarth (ish) clothes I’m used to working in. I think I’ve been much more productive, which surprised me. Admittedly, the fact that I’ve moved office and my boss can now see my screen directly no doubt adds to the lack of Internet-based timewasting, but I’m sure I’m onto something with the clothes.

I’m not a scruffy oik, I’m really not. But wearing smart clothes at work feels a little like pretending I’m some sort of serious, dedicated worker, and really, I’ll work hard and I do my job blooming well, but I’m not in it for life, I’m here for the money. So I like to be in jeans and T-shirt, I feel that much more like me, less pressurised into working, and thus working better.

Cod psychology, I has it.

I.T. has written an interesting article - or at least part of it - about universities, the point of them in general, and so on. While it doesn’t go as far as most academics would, which in my experience includes dismissing the entire administrative community as a vast, mindless red-tape machine, it raises some interesting points about the future of what a university is required for, and argues nicely as to why the endless chains of middle-management are doing nothing but drawing out a death.

These are fair points - I have to agree with a lot of what he says. As an admin monkey, I have to explain that tedious and hideous though audits may be, they’re a necessary thing to ensure the comfortable academic community doesn’t get decimated by apocalyptic waves of lawsuits. Some bureaucracy is necessary to ensure that insane lecturers such as those I deal with on a regular basis, don’t run roughshod over the friendly, easy-going ones.

That’s what I’ve been dealing with for the last few days, and the curse of the administrative team, I made one mistake. I’ll admit this, it wasn’t just me, etc., but the fact of the matter is I made a mistake - a pretty small one in relative terms. And yet I’ve had a barrage of emails like an aerial bomdbardment both to me and over me - for professionals, these people are pretty snarky. The worst was the academics I’ve been dealing with, with whom I didn’t make a mistake - the phrase ‘toys out of the pram’ has rarely been as appropriate.

I certainly agree with IT on many things, and it’s an interesting discussion as to the future of universities: I’ve worked in maybe the worst and maybe the best in London, one after the other, and it’s interesting seeing the parallels. The thing I’ve seen both times though: academics don’t understand admin; admin doesn’t understand the academic. C’est la vie.

I’ve just finished rereading The Trial (Douglas Scott’s translation, pretty good), and was struck more than when I read it first (to be fair, a 14 year old won’t get a lot from Kafka). I recognise so much more these days, the endless bureaucracy where deeper and deeper levels of red-tape are included seemingly just for the sake of it. Kafka was pretty prescient - having been inducted, without any desire in that direction, briefly into the world of management and budgets, I sympathise with Josef K - I wonder just how many people in my (or any) workplace have very little idea of what they’re doing most of the time.

I know that’s true for me, stupid finances. My replacement for this temporary bit starts Monday, thank goodness. I can’t take much more of this, my head might explode. Or, I might find myself led off by two kindly, acquiescent ushers… but I spoil.

Next up, Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, which seems to me like an Umberto Eco for the xkcd generation. Sweet.

I’m a lot less of a troubled young man than yesterday. As usual, one’s home life provides much-needed perspective on one’s wider affairs, and today I find myself considerably more affable, diligent and amenable. This is partly to do with the fact that the Kazakh project I took on a little while ago - the really annoying one - is departing my troubled breast come Monday, it’s partly to do with some sort of financial clarifications that have come my way today, and it’s partly to do with the fact that some days I’m just moody.

But I digress: no-one wants, or needs, another whinging blogger.

Today I’m working through my lunch. Now, I well understand that this is not new or exciting to most people, but for this HE-career-coddled employee, that’s pretty rare. But I’m currently working overtime and everything, trying to not be poor anymore. It’s not a great deal of fun, but I’ve been spoilt this far, I guess.

I got off the tube this morning feeling tenderised like some sort of abused steak. I have absolutely no clue why some mornings the Underground is offensively crowded, and other mornings, there’s nobody around. I imagine it’s some sort of function of:

• the time I get to the station
• the gaps in the service
• the weather
• predicted events in London
• unpredicted hold-ups

I’m also considering the possibility that the level of overcrowding on the tube is directly related, and possibly caused by my eagerness to get to work. Hence, this morning, pounding the avenues in the rain I really would rather be home in bed, not shuffling deathward via the medium of tedium. And there you go, the platform’s not crowded but the tube is comfortably full even at Turnpike Lane - by the time I get to Finsbury Park, my face is squashed onto the plexiglass and someone’s sliding something into the roughly spaniel-sized space between my feet and the carriage.

Even at Holborn, where the traditional sullen, ashen-faced commuters disembark to the unseen chaos of Kingsway, an escalator was out and I found my faced knocked from all angles. I’m tall! I don’t understand.

I’m potentially being over-dramatic here. I read this morning about controlling one’s anger, so I’m controlling it and just scowling at the computer.

I’m currently loving me some Wedding Present. I feel like there’s a column coming on here, the purchase of Seamonsters edging out this slightly more esoteric, almost outsider art of Half Japanese’s noodly twangings. But more on that later, no doubt. In the meantime, blogging - unusually from home, I present the excellent opening track from Seamonsters.

The Wedding Present - Dalliance

At risk of being a standard blogger, my life is all about the yucky business end at the moment. Too much work, too much shoulderly tension, too little time or energy to spend with the people with whom I wish to spend time.

What’s keeping me going is the forward look at a hoped-for future (at least, foreseeable future: in the grander scope, the world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through, but that’s a bit lofty for a Wedding Present post). I’m currently working out a feasibility study on a career change. That is to say, to start a career, as I don’t really consider an accidental slip into HE administration a career. I want to do a second degree, most likely this one, and I need to work out whether I can clear my hefty overdraft in a year, whether I can get any sort of government funding/grants/moneys, whether I can work from home during the course or something (maybe i could answer questions for 118 118), etc. I’d love love love to get on with this, and although it doesn’t look likely until September 2009, I think I have a goal now. Weird.

So maybe COUTTH will become a documented experiment in living frugally. Steps taken so far:

• Shopping at Aldi
• Cutting out takeaways
• Packed lunch
• Not eating snacks (not going well)

I’m looking at downgrading my beloved motor, but don’t want to face up to the fact that I might have to ditch it altogether.

DO NOT WANT.