...You Might Just Get It
I'm in a rather tumultous sort of state of mind at the moment; there's just so much on my mind and it's quite impossible to get everything nice and clearly set down where it'll stay before it gets up and wanders around and then I have to go chase after it again.
So let's start with... well, for once work isn't the Big Crazy Issue dominating my mind that it usually is; or at least right now it's only one of the Big Crazy Issues. Which is not at all a good thing, of course, but one learns to look for the small blessings in life. At any rate we will begin with my personal life, because that one at least is easy to describe.
I've been having dreams again - my dreams are always weird, I'm not sure why. It's as if my subconscious looks over my shoulder when I'm awake and chatting on MSN and it sees all the horrible things I type at people in jest (today, for example, the prevailing topic of conversation was "horrible things I will do to your corpse if I outlive you") and then it waits until I go to sleep and then springs even worse things on me. Last week, for example; I dreamt I was walking on a suspended bridge a great height up in the air. In fact it wasn't a bridge so much as it was a labyrinth of sorts, and it was completely made of wood; you could see the outside through the gaps in the walls and floor, and the walls came up to roughly waist height, and above that was a lattice, also of wood, full of ivy and other climbing plants with tendrils. I was there alone, but in front of me (in the beginning of the dream) was a small group of strangers, which included a young man. I was going along the path, stooping slightly to avoid some of the lower-hanging tendrils, when I saw movement amongst the ivy. It was a snake.
The rest of the dream was one long interminable sequence of me on my knees, moving as slowly as I could towards any direction that looked like the exit, trying desperately to not attract the attention of the snakes; the snakes were apparently blind to slow movements but had sharp ears, and I had to get away from the young man, who was excitable and would scream at sudden points. I woke up sweating from that dream.
The other dream came a couple of nights ago; I was walking through a shopping district with some friends, but not anybody I actually know in real life; they were merely a group of unidentifiable friends. We went past a particular corner on which stood a two-storey shop; the lower storey sold perfectly innocuous things, but the second storey (which unmistakably belonged to the same store as the lower storey) had walls of glass, through which one could see people doing things that would (if done in public in real life) have resulted in people covering the eyes of nearby children and screaming to the nearest police officers about flagrant exposure and worse. In my dream, I made up an excuse for the rest of the group to go on without me, upon which I went back and forth past that shop several times to make up my dream-mind; upon which, after my mind was made up, I went into the shop and went to the second storey, and found it completely empty. Disappointed, I went to rejoin the group; none of them said anything, but I knew that they knew that I had gone to visit the second storey, and they were wordlessly disappointed in me. And then I woke up.
I don't interpret anybody's dreams, let alone mine; but these dreams were strange ones.
And on to the waking world...
My parents bought a house, about ten minutes from where I live. They're expecting me to move into it, and stop renting (and therefore stop needing to pay rent), by the end of this month... it's not furnished at all apart from a few small necessities like clothesracks and cleaning tools. Still, I'll probably move the remainder of the non-necessities in tomorrow, and then do a bit more cleaning, and then... well, and then we'll see. I'll have to notify the landlord, of course, and complete the moving, and figure out how to pay the bills and things (as in literally where to go to pay the bills), and get a good broadband line in, and then the furnishing... I read somewhere about the benefits of standing tables and now I want one too.
So that's that for that - quite simple and straightforward really isn't it...
My job is where I'm properly terrified right now. Not quite terrified; but I'm certainly apprehensive... Basically the company's about to do a bit of expanding, and the GM has enough faith in my direct superior to take him off to the new branch - which leaves me to replace him in all his duties. I'm not one of those people blessed with a deep and abiding sense of self-worth and confidence, though, and the idea is slightly frightening to me. What if I'm already at my level of competence and this will lead to a Peter Principle? And with all those people under me... And so much still to be done. These two weeks are hectic, and I haven't done half of the things I want to do and new things keep coming up to be done all the time.
I read somewhere, once, that most people stay at their first job for six months or less and then move on. In my case I've managed to stay at this company for more than a year now, but haven't spent more than six months in one position - I was in Purchasing for a little less than six months and now I've been the Lab Head for six months going on seven and I'm apparently on the verge of becoming the Senior Engineer... I told myself at graduation that I'd like to be one of those people who join a company and end up staying there for ten years or more, but I never thought it would happen. It's a bit frightening to suddenly be told I'm about to be the second-highest-up in the department, second only to the Head of Department, especially when I know how big a goofball I can sometimes be and when I know how my brain fritzes out on me. I hardly dare take it, but it seems like a clear direction from God. After all, I know myself well enough by now to be sure that I'm a good follower, if a rather sarcastic one, and not terribly good at leading. At least, I think so; I've never been told so.
My GM thinks I need to care about people more, and be more active, though. I haven't the foggiest how I'll do those.
So let's start with... well, for once work isn't the Big Crazy Issue dominating my mind that it usually is; or at least right now it's only one of the Big Crazy Issues. Which is not at all a good thing, of course, but one learns to look for the small blessings in life. At any rate we will begin with my personal life, because that one at least is easy to describe.
I've been having dreams again - my dreams are always weird, I'm not sure why. It's as if my subconscious looks over my shoulder when I'm awake and chatting on MSN and it sees all the horrible things I type at people in jest (today, for example, the prevailing topic of conversation was "horrible things I will do to your corpse if I outlive you") and then it waits until I go to sleep and then springs even worse things on me. Last week, for example; I dreamt I was walking on a suspended bridge a great height up in the air. In fact it wasn't a bridge so much as it was a labyrinth of sorts, and it was completely made of wood; you could see the outside through the gaps in the walls and floor, and the walls came up to roughly waist height, and above that was a lattice, also of wood, full of ivy and other climbing plants with tendrils. I was there alone, but in front of me (in the beginning of the dream) was a small group of strangers, which included a young man. I was going along the path, stooping slightly to avoid some of the lower-hanging tendrils, when I saw movement amongst the ivy. It was a snake.
The rest of the dream was one long interminable sequence of me on my knees, moving as slowly as I could towards any direction that looked like the exit, trying desperately to not attract the attention of the snakes; the snakes were apparently blind to slow movements but had sharp ears, and I had to get away from the young man, who was excitable and would scream at sudden points. I woke up sweating from that dream.
The other dream came a couple of nights ago; I was walking through a shopping district with some friends, but not anybody I actually know in real life; they were merely a group of unidentifiable friends. We went past a particular corner on which stood a two-storey shop; the lower storey sold perfectly innocuous things, but the second storey (which unmistakably belonged to the same store as the lower storey) had walls of glass, through which one could see people doing things that would (if done in public in real life) have resulted in people covering the eyes of nearby children and screaming to the nearest police officers about flagrant exposure and worse. In my dream, I made up an excuse for the rest of the group to go on without me, upon which I went back and forth past that shop several times to make up my dream-mind; upon which, after my mind was made up, I went into the shop and went to the second storey, and found it completely empty. Disappointed, I went to rejoin the group; none of them said anything, but I knew that they knew that I had gone to visit the second storey, and they were wordlessly disappointed in me. And then I woke up.
I don't interpret anybody's dreams, let alone mine; but these dreams were strange ones.
And on to the waking world...
My parents bought a house, about ten minutes from where I live. They're expecting me to move into it, and stop renting (and therefore stop needing to pay rent), by the end of this month... it's not furnished at all apart from a few small necessities like clothesracks and cleaning tools. Still, I'll probably move the remainder of the non-necessities in tomorrow, and then do a bit more cleaning, and then... well, and then we'll see. I'll have to notify the landlord, of course, and complete the moving, and figure out how to pay the bills and things (as in literally where to go to pay the bills), and get a good broadband line in, and then the furnishing... I read somewhere about the benefits of standing tables and now I want one too.
So that's that for that - quite simple and straightforward really isn't it...
My job is where I'm properly terrified right now. Not quite terrified; but I'm certainly apprehensive... Basically the company's about to do a bit of expanding, and the GM has enough faith in my direct superior to take him off to the new branch - which leaves me to replace him in all his duties. I'm not one of those people blessed with a deep and abiding sense of self-worth and confidence, though, and the idea is slightly frightening to me. What if I'm already at my level of competence and this will lead to a Peter Principle? And with all those people under me... And so much still to be done. These two weeks are hectic, and I haven't done half of the things I want to do and new things keep coming up to be done all the time.
I read somewhere, once, that most people stay at their first job for six months or less and then move on. In my case I've managed to stay at this company for more than a year now, but haven't spent more than six months in one position - I was in Purchasing for a little less than six months and now I've been the Lab Head for six months going on seven and I'm apparently on the verge of becoming the Senior Engineer... I told myself at graduation that I'd like to be one of those people who join a company and end up staying there for ten years or more, but I never thought it would happen. It's a bit frightening to suddenly be told I'm about to be the second-highest-up in the department, second only to the Head of Department, especially when I know how big a goofball I can sometimes be and when I know how my brain fritzes out on me. I hardly dare take it, but it seems like a clear direction from God. After all, I know myself well enough by now to be sure that I'm a good follower, if a rather sarcastic one, and not terribly good at leading. At least, I think so; I've never been told so.
My GM thinks I need to care about people more, and be more active, though. I haven't the foggiest how I'll do those.
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