Well Friday was officially the last day at work in Ireland. The last few days were so manic that a tooting taxi to take me to the airport on Friday afternoon arrived long before I was ready for it. I didn't really get a chance to say goodbye to the few people still left, struggling to meet a deadline that expires a week tomorrow (albeit two weeks later than the internally set one we were aiming for), and have spent most of the weekend since in a 'too tired to sleep' zombified state where the happy realisation that the 'Irish experiment' MAY really, finally be over, just hasn't really sunk in yet.
This is probably just as well because I have a horrid feeling I'm going to get a call for help tomorrow or Tuesday asking me to fly out and help avert a possible looming crisis before next Monday's deadline arrives. Hopefully not and I'm just being too 'glass half empty' about the whole thing.
Former colleagues on the project and friends seem surprised that I don't regret the whole difficult experience, but the truth is I needed a break from London and despite all the hassle and stress the contract achieved for me what I'd wanted from it. I met and worked with some really good people too, which is always a bonus. All that being said, it's good to be home!
Today I've started what I meant to do back in February when my new Vista laptop and two new widescreen monitors arrived: start the 'Spring cleaning' job I've been putting off for the best part of the last six years. Before going to Ireland I only ever got time to install one of the afore-mentioned monitors because of the ridiculously over-crowded office I have at home. The other monitor, complete with stand and docking station, has been blocking my hallway in sealed boxes for months and there comes a point where constantly moving piles of paperwork from one place to another in a vain attempt to try and acccommodate them really doesn't achieve anything. So more than 10 years of assorted paper, CDs, DVDs and electrical debris need to be correctly filed, abandoned or otherwise deployed so that I can start work on prepping for new Microsoft certification exams, getting to grips with the £300 worth of 'new client-side technology' books that were waiting for me when I got home (Thanks Brian and David for taking delivery and then bringing them round so they were waiting!) and, at some point, kick-starting development of the temporarily abandoned shinydiscs.com site and its associated blog reviews.
So it's good to be home, but I'll feel a lot more confident about that if I'm still here on Wednesday! In the meantime I don't think I've cleared as much dust, sorted out so many tangled wires, or repeatedly wiped down so many surfaces as I have in the last 24 hours. And that's just in one corner of one room! What I'm trying to say is... I may be back but it may still be some time before I'm back to the 'daily blog update' that was always the intention when I started this thing over a year ago.
3 comments:
Welcome back to Blighty! I shall keep my fingers crossed that your spring cleaning doesn't get interrupted by a panicked call from the project folks.
What's next on the Ian Agenda? Some time out to unwind, I hope!
Thanks Jen.
As is becoming appallingly obvious (techies are even blogging about it already!) Christmas isn't too far away. Planning to spend a week in Cyprus with my sister at her place for a week in November; otherwise it's certification and learning.
Finances will be tight - especially since nobody hires for the first few weeks of January, and I don't think I've helped my finances much by spending £300 on books and £900 on an Aeron chair for the office (but after 2 years of backache which miraculously vanished when I went to Ireland, except for Sunday afternoons when I was back home, something had to be done). It's an obscene amount to pay for a chair, but heck, I looked in the mirror this morning and thought "You're worth it".
(Chair actually arrived a couple of weeks ago and I wish I'd got it two years ago instead of suffering for so long).
You're totally worth it - and the right equipment makes all the difference *nudge nudge* ;-)
Hope the next gig doesn't take you away from home so much.
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