Sep 21

 Another working "week" done. Two days a week is absolutely my limit at the moment. And even that is a struggle. I am needing a lot of down time, stress free, comatose living. It is what it is. I guess I should be very thankful that I lead a sustainable life, even only working 2 days a week. A lot of people have it far far worse.

I could do without the shit health that forces that on me though.

Eh well.

Slowly, oh so slowly, I think I am getting a little strength back. It is hideously pathetically slow. Weeks fly by. And I inch towards feeling better. Today I had an inch backwards, but, nothing dramatically worse. I am still sticking to my meds regime.

Went for a walk in a new place today. A new spot just outside of Norwich proper. Same river. Different locale. Fields. Rivers. Ponds. Reeds. Horses.

Athena hasn't seen too many horses in her life. I think perhaps two in all her years. Today there were more than half a dozen. All in the same field as us. And she was wary.

On TV she loves horses. Sits up. Pays attention. She used to get up and go sit right by the TV.

In reality, Athena is wary of them in person. Big. Undeniably fascinating - she was mesmerised by them. But she didn't want much to do with them and made sure they were well away from her. She sees cows a lot. And they don't hold the same fascination. She clearly gets the difference between a horse and a cow. I love watching her work new things out. You can see the gears turning.

It was a nice walk, despite it being rainy. I kinda made a mistake and went out in the rain. Athena didn't seem to mind. She was in and out of the water anyway. Tested a few river spots. And every single pond we came to. They scored highly on the Athena satisfaction test. You can tell. She stands in them and wanders around. No hurry to come out. Just wanders around walking along the bottom. She truly loves being in water. So long as it's not too deep. Too deep is head beneath water deep. Anything with head above water is just fine. In fact. If it comes up to her shoulders, all the better. In shallow water she will instinctively seek out deeper water. I suspect she likes the way it feels on her belly - draws all the heat out of her. If the water is frustratingly shallow all over, sometimes you can see she stoops or thinks about lying down in it. It's not high enough for her liking.

I get a satisfaction out of finding nice places to walk Athena. I am always thinking of it from a dogs perspective. An enriching environment. Places to sniff. Explore. Splash around. Run. See new things. Experience different stuff. Safe. I think it makes her life better. And it feels good to be out and about in nature when I am not feeling like shit. I was not feeling like shit today. So I enjoyed it.

Athena is my highest priority in life. Which is not to say that life revolves around her. But her welfare is the most important thing to me. Her quality of life. Like all animals. They rely on us to be their advocate. Their voice. Their protectors in a human world. They are at our complete mercy. We have a duty to protect them and not betray that trust.

On the way home we stopped at "my favourite petrol station". Yeah. Weird thing to have. Perhaps its my age. Perhaps its the fact that it is relatively new and shiny and also has an M & S food hall attached to it, which means, petrol, and yummy M & S things.

Me and Athena shared an M & S sausage roll on the rest of the way home through the rainy traffic. She's lovely. I hold my hand over my shoulder. And 5 seconds later a gentle snootling takes the food out of my hand. I like to think she enjoys our chill little drives and snacking.

She does my black little soul good.

I have to say, perhaps as an old fart, I am liking the trend in petrol stations over here to go a bit "upmarket". M & S food halls attached. Fancy coffee outlets and cakes. The better ones are becoming little oases of good food and drink. A far cry from the old days of dubious products and lots of chocolate. Not that chocolate is bad. But still. I am digging it. And it's working on me. I quite like going to them now and treating myself. And I avoid the old school no frills ones if I can. Fuck that. And in Norfolk at least. The staff are always cheery. Chatty. It's nice. I love Norfolk for how happy it generally is. Go South. Into Essex. And it starts to fade. The closer you get to London. The grimmer it gets. Fuck London. Noise. Rush. Misery. Pollution. You can keep it. And I say that a born and bred Londoner used to swishing into Central London every other weekend for shopping ( games, books and music naturally ).

Work was frustrating this week. More shit to do before I could even go back to my second interrupted task. Whats this. Why that. Is it because you did this ? Our new-ish PM started showing his cracks. Supposedly highly rated. He started pulling bullshit out of his suitcase. Oh yes, he said, I had heard that X had been tweaking the server to give it more resources.

No.

*I* had fucking fixed the server by altering the resources when no one else could be arsed for a week and it crashed again.

He had waffled off a bullshit laden email to the client explaining the problem and the solution. Both of which were completely wrong.

The client is not to know. They just nod their head.

This can be IT to a tee. Useless fucking cogs up and down the tree prattling on about utter bullshit. Just glib words. Snake oil. Very few actual fucking doers. Even less doers who actually know their shit.

Eh well.

Whatever.

I spent one day just holding everyone elses hands and correcting assumptions and previous fuckups. And also correcting, no, that was not caused by me. It's caused by you. Here is the proof. The logs. The actual fucking black and white text. Not just you floofing around pulling bullshit out of the air.

Sometimes IT can come down to this as well. Less about facts. And more about spin. The "agreed narrative". It becomes like politics, more about what people say and how they say it, than the actual fucking facts. I have no time for that shit. If you want to practice bullshittery and speech writing fuck off out of my sight. I have machines to talk to and patch up and idiotic human illogic to iron out into something that works.

The other day of the week I finally got back to my Stuck Help We Cant Do This problem. Finished it off. Got it all working. Handed it back to everyone else.

Which means next week I can go back to my original task I was in the middle of, before everyone else hurricaned through my work. 3 weeks ago ? By next week it will be a month delay.

Somehow I doubt I will get much time with it next week however. By next week, there will be more noses to wipe.

My friend noted that whilst frustrating, to everyone else, I was being very helpful. And useful. And that was what it was all about.

I retorted that you could also feed me into a meat grinder where my ample size would no doubt feed a small village for a week on Me Hamburger. That would also be being useful and helpful to the community. Cannibalism. Pretty shit for me though.

Part of what I get paid for I guess.

It's just frustrating work and comes at a mental health cost. It is that constantly in charge of the screaming kids kind of job. There are more peaceful ways to earn a living. There are more peaceful ways that I can be productive in IT.

We all have our preferences for what we like and don't like. Good jobs. Bad jobs. Good environments. Bad environments. I am sick of the sight of having to play nurse maid to people. And to be their intellectual whore. Think for yourself. Leave me alone. Ask me to do something clever, sure. Ask me to constantly hover over your shoulder and correct your homework and do your homework. No thank you. Do your own homework. You suck ? That's unfortunate. Get better. Or learn to live with your actual capability. Your actual capability is not good enough to be sustainable ? Then life is telling you to get a different career my dude. Yes I get that's painful. And scary. You have to face that shit. Reality. The solution is not for me to carry you round all the time instead and live in la la land.

I think that's what it is. I am tired of letting everyone use my capabilities to feel better about themselves. And then they get addicted to that. Give them a taste of flying. They always want you to fly them around. I am sick of giving rides.

Still.

It's 2 days a week.

It is the minimal part of my life now. So. Good thing. It pays bills. I have many privileges. It works for me. Despite being an irritation.

My main regret now is not having more money.

Not for myself.

But to help everyone else around me to sort out a few problems for them.

I see it as somewhat of a failure on my part.

Then again. I can't save everyone. 

I wish I could help others out with showers of money.

I am background thinking on ways I could - within the confines of my supremely limited energy - make some extra cash so I can start offering more help to others.

Dunno.

I will probably burn out on it and give up. I'm asleep more than half of my life anyway.

Still. Thinking it through doesn't hurt.