A day of long awaited culminations. Finally the scientist met the romanticist, and oddly spoke about theft of public property and typefaces. Still, it was sort of fitting that it should occur on the very day that we found ourselves quaffing champagne on the footsteps of the halls of learning. Confusing whirlwinds of disappointment, affirmation and reassurance. A very, very strange day indeed - and one that will go down in history. My disquiet about learning and employment reached some sort of crisis point today. Really quite confused about how to proceed.
Regrettably was too unwell after Friday's excesses to visit Stirling Books as I'd planned. These past few weeks have seen me return to reading with frightening capacity. I'm really uncomfortable with not learning at the moment - and some of the tasks at work bring me tantalisingly close to interesting courses. Lots of cleaning, tidying and general springlike activity here today. Later, a flying visit sees a great work almost concluded for a friend - which is an inspiration, but further wakes the urge to be doing something useful. I'm certainly not ungrateful for the way things have gone in terms of employment - its just a strange time I suppose.
A rare venture into nighttime Weston in celebration of a birthday. Generally it was actually fun to be out and about, and even (uncharacteristically) to socialise with almost-new people. I surprise myself sometimes. Later, things were perhaps not so harmonious, but this too is almost a Friday night tradition I suppose. Very drunk, slightly maudlin, but generally OK. Over the past couple of days I've done quite a bit of housekeeping - resigned from the GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee, not necessarily the negative step it sounds. Nice mail from Gman and dmueth in recognition of my (honestly quite limited) work for the committee.
It's the middle of my second week in my new job. I'm all at sea really - I like the work, and the new challenges are most welcome. Its just a bit strange to have moved such a little way, but come so far if that makes any sense at all? People are nice, and tolerate my absurd sense of humour and occasional failures to hear what they're saying (all too frequent - do I need a hearing test?). I'm still enjoying organising my days efficiently, getting things done and bustling through early starts and achieving early finishes. Feel curiously unfulfilled outside work however - maybe its that I'm concentrating my energy on the job right now - keeping all my eggs in one basket so to speak. Reading like fury just now - which is fun of course. But missing GUADEC has had an odd effect - I feel like I've little left to offer the GNOME project (except as an avid and happy user of course). As the platform grows in complexity, I feel less able to attempt to understand it. I also feel somewhat distanced from the core of the community as it grows and seems to be more focused on delivering to its corporate backers. I must reiterate - none of this is bad for GNOME - or for me, because I get to use an increasingly stable desktop environment. My attempts to fill administrative posts have been interesting, but ultimately a bit frustrating. As I've often said (in usually mercifully shorter entries), these are strange times.
Lost::MikeGTN
I've had a home on the web for more years than I care to remember, and a few kind souls persuade me it's worth persisting with keeping it updated. This current incarnation of the site is centred around the blog posts which began back in 1999 as 'the daylog' and continued through my travels and tribulations during the following years.
I don't get out and about nearly as much these days, but I do try to record significant events and trips for posterity. You may also have arrived here by following the trail to my former music blog Songs Heard On Fast Trains. That content is preserved here too.
