footpad, posts by tag: work - LiveJournal (original) (raw)

Tying it all together	[Oct. 21st, 2011|11:21 am]Footpad
[Tags**|coming out, depression, furry, jody, piotr, work] [Current Mood**	hopeful]Dear me, that was an icky couple of weeks. My boss is very understanding of my situation and tries hard to avoid making me work two weekends in a row, but this time it just had to be. I can manage one weekend without getting to see my dog, but now it's nearly three weeks and it's kind of an ache, you know what I mean?I miss akeela too, but I miss him in the evenings. Right now there's watery morning sunlight slanting across the valley and I want to be out jogging in the cool damp woods with Mischa, taking pleasure in each other's company in the wordless communion of packmates.My room shows all the signs of a mild bout of depression. Scattered DVDs on the table, litter on the floor, an unmade bed. There've been signs of progress, of getting back to grips with things in the office and in the home, but everything's been a bit Too Much Effort recently. Unanswered emails, unfulfilled social obligations, lost objects, a general sense of running two paces behind everyone else and never quite being able to catch up. Fairly soon I'll look at all the mess and think, "damn, that's annoying," and I'll start clearing up and then I'll be back in the swing of things. Not quite yet though.I've got to work tomorrow too, but I have every prospect of getting away in time to take a train up to Germany, and then I get Monday off as well and my life will once again contain people and talk and the serene bliss of lying on the living-room carpet with my arm around Mischa, both of us half-asleep and smiling in an oxytocin daze. I most definitely have things to look forward too.Hey, akeela, please decide what you want to have cooked for you on Sunday evening.÷I've always been vaguely ashamed of being an Internet Furry Freak, but over the past months it has, for whatever equally weird and inexplicable reason, ceased to bother me. I'm still a little... sensitive about it, and not entirely without reason. Here's how the conversation went, with a much-esteemed and dear colleague of mine, over our trays of mediocre food at the staff canteen:Him, looking at my not-obviously-convention T-shirt: "What does that 'CH-on' on your T-shirt mean?"Me, laconically: "Furry convention."His eyes brighten and he tilts his head, smiling incredulously. "What?"Equally tersely, "Furry convention." I fork some food, chew and swallow.He rocks back in his seat as though, looking away from me and laughing with a hysterical edge in his voice. "Oh my go-o-o-o-od!"And, in a later conversation:"I've got to say you're one of the more sorted-out furries I've known."I double-take, and can't help breaking into a grin. "Dude... mental patient?""Still."So clearly my reticence was more than a little justified, 'cause there's a Reputation out there. Sometime I need to ask him what on earth, by reputation or painful experience, he thinks furries actually are. The answer surely promises to be comically and painfully hilarious.÷So last night, at a going-away party for a dear colleague and friend whom I've worked with right from my first day at CERN, I gave that friend the address of this blog. I know him as well as I know almost anyone; we've stood by each other through thick and thin and he's taught me a lot about who I am and how to survive in the real world. And yet I never ever talked with him about a whole other side of my life.So now he gets to find out, and that's a good thing. Hiya J. Here's the rest of the freak show. Love you, man.
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Pigs winging gently overhead	[Jun. 7th, 2011|03:14 pm]Footpad
[**Tags**|job, life, mischa, redundancy, whoa, work]There have been rumours, and questions, and slow seismic shifts, and some revealingly explicit denials from the management, and even now I only get the news from a trustworthy source in the management who's heard something more than usually reliable on the grapevine, and wants me to be prepared for what's coming, but:Within the next fortnight I can expect, with near-as-dammit 100% certainty, to lose my job at The Bank.Apparently it's normally done completely without warning. They ask you if you can drop in on a meeting for a moment, and when you walk in you find that there's a manager and a HR droid and a piece of paper on the table. From that meeting room, you are escorted to your desk to pick up personal effects, and then you're escorted to the door, and that's that. I look forward to this process with morbid interest.This is, of course, because they don't want me getting disgruntled, sowing logic-bombs all over their critical infrastructure, and costing them millions more than they could sue me for. Needless to say, that's not my style—but, as my contract specifies a three-month notice period, this basically means that I'm getting pushed out of the door with at least a quarter-year's pay in hand. More, if I'm canny about various training initiatives. So, while the job market in Germany isn't as robust as I'd like, Mischa isn't going to have to worry about his dog-food supply for at least a little while.To summarise?Cons: loss of high income that I probably can't fully replace (especially with the current CHF/EUR rate). Leaving Switzerland. Uncertainty of finding another job. Possibility of not finding another job, with catastrophic consequences for our current living arrangements.Pros: More time with Mischa. Going back to akeela and draugvorn. More time cuddling Mischa. Comfortable severance package that gives me a bit of leeway in finding another job. More time walking Mischa. More chance of seeing German friends—generally improved social life, including Mischa.So far, I'm punching the numbers into my calculator and they make a happy face.
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Sing me a fever	[Mar. 19th, 2011|12:45 am]Footpad
[Tags**|illness, work] [Current Mood**	overloaded]I want to be ill. I think it'd do me good.I haven't been ill for ages, probably because Switzerland's so relatively free of people coughing, spluttering, sneezing, and generally pervading every public area with the miasma of their pathogens. Presumably the Swiss do still get colds, but I guess they sequester themselves in their air-raid shelters, or maybe sneezing in public gets you interned for the greater good until your immune system is back up to eidgenossische standards. Anyway, the place is refreshingly free of those walking bioreactors whose only purpose in life is to turn every English public-transport vehicle into a kind of mobile Unit 731.But now I want the flu. I want to spend a day and a night roasting in that hallucinatory dry heat of rising fever, watching the ceiling warp into the strange fascinations of delirium. I want akeela to pass by now and then with soothing words and weak fruit squash. I want time to stop and draw out indefinitely without boredom. I want sleep to come and go unremarked. Above all, most of all, I want some time out from responsibility.Work's been a bear. It'll still be a bear tomorrow. I have things on my mind. My head's full of things I've got to do. My thoughts won't keep still. Every waking hour is filled with calculations of what needs doing, and when, and for whom, and why, and in which order, and which ones I can drop in order to fulfil the most important, and it does. not. stop.So what I'd like right about now is a short sharp fever. Nobody asks you to do anything when you've got a fever,¹ and that even includes yourself. Utter inactivity, with an utterly clear conscience, and a pretty much utterly empty mind. What an irresistibly savoury prospect. It's bad for the body but it'd sure as hell be good for the soul.So how about it? Nothing too drastic, 39.5°C, say, enough to really cook for a day or so, then arise weak and drained of energy but somehow also refreshed. Reset, you might say. Clarity restored.'Cause right at the moment I don't see fuck-all chance of getting my peace any other way.—¹ Unless you're autumn_sunrise.
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