Apr 26

 Exhausted. Eyes feel full of sand.

I have started using my oxy tracking device again when I sleep because, it's bad again.

I reviewed my results, not great, not exactly horrific either. I now have my doubts whether my sleep issues are apnea or not. I definitely have apnea at times but I think it rises and falls, like everything else with me. Sometimes it's a major issue. Sometimes it's a background issue.

Which kinda circles me back round to - my sleep and why do I have black eyes and stinging red eyes when I wake up and always feel super tired. Allergies ? Shit circulation ? A failing heart ?

Meh.

I will keep monitoring the oxy and see how it does. Based on that I will make a final call on getting a CPAP. I suppose I should just get one anyway and see if it makes a difference. There's nothing quite like just fucking testing something in actuality to figure out if it works or not. Rather than dithering around with theoreticals and monitoring.

Right foot doing better. Left foot frustratingly painful and getting worse. Sigh. A real mystery deep pain in the left foot. What The Fuck Is Going On With My Feet ? Everyday is a new and exciting adventure in shitty things happening.

Bah.

I am stuck at the moment in limbo. Part of me wants to do some stuff. Tidy. Go for a walk. A little activity. And part of me is utterly exhausted. In pain. Desperate to go back to sleep. As it is I do neither. Not really able to sleep well. And not able to do anything.

Marvellous.

I was too sluggish today to catch a possible swim. I think a swim might break me out a little of the catch 22 ill exhausted but want to do something bucket. I wish the bloody pool was more flexible than just a single one hour fucking slot for most of an entire day. Nail that. Or don't swim at all. Idiotic. I don't really get it to be honest. If the pool is that popular that it needs such strict segmenting, then, that surely means you have a massive demand for pools and not enough supply. So. Build another one ? Fill a need. Make money. People happy. The theoretical capitalist ideal of exploiting a hole in the market. What's. The. Fucking. Issue ?

I blame the halfwit council. Full of idiots, career half assers, and weird hangers on that like having a job for life continually under achieving in public service. As unfair as it might be, I can't say I've ever met someone in any local government career that has even slightly impressed me with competence, motivation, foresight etc. It is filled to the brim with lazy also ran card punching types. Not for the most part shit enough to get kicked out the door. But also absolutely no sign of anything like a spark. An endless department of the quasi retired, out of touch, uninterested, just do enough-ers or borderline unemployable fuckups. From the few people I do know who work within its halls - who are smart and conscientious, albeit perhaps yeah, lacking much in the way of ambition ( which is no bad thing ) - they rate their fellow workers as harshly as I do. Ass covering, incompetence and pathological avoidance of any kind of responsibility is a recurring theme of their tales from within the beast.

Perhaps it's a self fulfilling prophecy. Those that are better than that end up leaving local government to do better elsewhere. I used to work with a guy who started in local government doing IT. Did that for a few years, got promoted. Realised the pace and quality of work was shit. Left. Went into the mainstream IT workforce and went from strength to strength. He's a projects director now at a Very Large IT Consultancy and a bit of a golden boy.

The talent ends up leaving the dusty incompetence of local government. Thus. Local government is the equivalent staff wise of a beige cardigan. No one within its halls is setting the world alight.

From that perspective it makes perfect sense. Local government is like the local pub side football league. If you actually have any footballing talent, you get promoted out of that towards the more professional end of the spectrum.

Pretty damning for society that relies on the council for some major quality of life stuff however. If you have halfwits in charge of the running and design of your society. What kind of society are you going to get ?

They should do something to shake it up. Inject talent and enthusiasm into local society. How you do that beyond offering ( unavailable ) high amounts of pay and perks is an open question. I can't believe however that absolutely everyone in society is out for themselves. Surely there are some that would be willing to take up some tasks for something other than major renumeration. If I'm doing it for a charity, surely, I can't be the only one ? Perhaps the problem is the full time old school role notion of it all. Employing someone full time to sit in a dilapidated office, at a slow paced job with no prospects for below par wage. Unless you have a desire to have a sleepy job - which can be a boon if you're in that market - no one who can do better is ever going to take a job like that. Perhaps what's needed is more of a secondary job kind of affair, where people have their fancier, more rewarding more motivated full time occupation that offers a pay that meets their expectations, and then on the side also do some work for the local government. You could imagine under that system you could perhaps leverage the best expertise in relevant industries to feedback into your local government. IT for instance. Of course it's based on a certain level of good will and people wanting to do the right thing. If you're cynical that doesn't happen. I don't believe this to be true though. There are enough people out there who are not like that, that such a system could work.

This all does start to remind me of the Covid response by local authorities back in the day however. As someone who founded our local covid support structure I can say that the local authority response was immensely slow, utterly lacking, and very quickly just pointed everyone at what we were doing. Private citizens who had the capability very quickly organised from a central command into sub commands, communications setup, schedules, safety et al. And all of that was done whilst the local government response was zero. Literally. Zero.

I think that probably shows you where the talent is. And where it isn't.

Local gov is the sleepy old caretaker who just makes sure the light gets turned on when it gets dark. And turned off again when its light. And once in a while sweeps the corridor. Anything else is alarming and beyond his paygrade.