Last Man Standing

Long time no post, and all that.

Work this week has been pretty much as it has been the last few weeks... frustrating. There is only so many times you can explain simple concepts to someone before you go quite mad. I'm generally a very patient person, but by the middle of the week I had already pretty much run out of patience with a couple of people at work.

Pete left today, and a few others signalled their intentions to follow in the very near future, bringing the attrition in the team to near fatal levels. Despite Pete's constant piss-taking of everyone (and myself being a favoured target) I think we'll miss his complete disrespect for everything. At least he made things interesting. Considering that we were worried about having enough desk space only a couple of months ago, there are going to be an awful lot of empty desks about come mid September. It would be easy to point the finger, and attribute everything to a single cause, but I don't think that’s the case. Everyone has their own reasons... they probably all share common roots, but it wouldn't be fair to single out a single thing as the cause. Rushing to take on new staff with no experience in the run up to the ever important "Year End" isn't exactly desirable, but I don't think trying to do it with the staffing levels we'll have then if we don't is either.

I’m usually cautiously optimistic about things… a strangely cynical "things will work out ok... eventually", but I can’t see things getting any better for months.

Adrift

*essay on the meaning of truth goes here*

I’m not feeling coherent enough to actually write it.

So in other news…

Reasonably productive week at work, managed to mostly stay out of "projectitics" (what I’m going to start calling project politics) and where I couldn’t avoid being involved, it wasn’t too bad, and I mostly convinced people to let me do what I know I need to. Next week looks like being pretty quiet, The Boss, The Boss’s Boss, and The Boss’s Boss’s Boss are all likely to be away, as are half the rest of the team I think.

Not done a huge amount other than go to work this week really, I’ve run into some sort of empty patch. But I’m not particularly motivated to change that either for some reason, just kinda drifting along waiting for... well, I’m not sure... something, to happen. No doubt nothing will happen unless I make it, but for now I think I prefer not thinking about what I want from life. I don’t know, but I’ve got tired of questioning.

Burning the Bridges

Evasive clues to questions, if you know what the answers are.

Truth seems elusive, and when I find it I wish I hadn't looked.
Reality is subjective, a figment of a collective imagination.
I stepped from behind the smoke and mirrors.
But found the truth no better than the lie.
Nobody smiles at broken magic.
It escaped into the night, it cannot be returned.

Stolen innocence, lost dreams.
Life is rarely what it seems.

The Blame Game

An addition somewhere in the last paragraph of my last post should perhaps be "I don't want you to think I'm just stupid, pathetic or weak willed because I do sacrifice things, because I do put up with things, because I do lend a hand without asking for anything in return, because I do sometimes do the "right thing" rather than what benefits me personally most".

Moving on to todays rant (actually a repost of something I wrote elsewhere)

The question for today is: Should people be allowed to make their own mistakes? And the follow on, should they be forced to take responsibility for them when they do?

There are two powerful, but opposite currents in society: Independence and Litigation. Should we be allowed to make our own mistakes? For example, decide to smoke despite the fact there is a huge body of evidence that shows it will probably kill you, and at the very least make you very unhealthy, have stained teeth and smell funny? Should we be allowed to sue tobacco companies when smoking does in fact, do this to us? The answer to both questions cannot be yes. Either you expect someone else to take responsibility for you, and then feel, quite rightly, let down if they don't. Or you are allowed to make your own way, but then have nobody to blame but yourself when you screw up.

You cannot sue for negligence (in essence for failing to uphold a responsibility) somebody who you didn't allow the power to enforce that responsibility. If you do not let people tell you what to do, you can't sue them for not having done so. You can't sue someone else for your own failure to allow people to advise and instruct you.

There is, of course, some kind of compromise. We don't have to be either totally autonomous, or totally dependent. But where the line is drawn must be clear, and universal. Flexibility will only lead to exploitation. Either people breaking the rules, but promising not to sue someone in future if it goes pear shaped, or suing people for not telling them that which nobody else needed to be told.

Personally, I would side on autonomy. I feel litigation is getting way out hand. We sue because nobody wiped our nose for us, for the slow realisation that we're complete idiots unable to walk on uneven surfaces, who don't know coffee is hot, or ice is slippy, or that sticking your hand in a grinder will render it useless for the rest of your life. I don't need to be told beef burgers are unhealthy, that I shouldn't eat rat poison, apply glue to my eyes or any of a number of other stupid warnings on modern products. Neither do I feel I have the right to sue someone if I had failed to realise these blindingly obvious facts.

Having said that... it is fairly obvious that a large section of the population isn't imbued with enough common sense or mental ability to realise some very obvious things, and they perhaps need nannying for their own good. There are a number of medical conditions that lead of obesity, but there are far more people who end up obese due to complete stupidity and an total inability to look after themselves. They are of course, exactly the people who blame everyone but themselves for the condition. "Its advertising! it makes fatty food impossible to resist!" - get a spine goddamnit! No it doesn't. "It's supermarkets, they put too much salt in their foods!" Granted, but you also poor half the salt shaker on it yourself no doubt.

Ultimately we must take responsibility for the way we live our lives, accept our mistakes, because doing so is the only way to learn from them and move on. But to copy a quote I sometimes put in my email signature:

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
- Douglas Adams

This also applies to our ability to learn from our own experience. We show a remarkable determination to repeat our own mistakes due in part, to our inability to accept them as our mistakes and not something someone else should have prevented.

The Quiet Man

Disclaimer: the text below isn't guaranteed to make sense, be logical, rational, based in reality, have a straight line of thought, a destination or a point. It's not a reasoned argument, it's simply badly spelt thoughts as they happen.

Whatever happened to Honour? To Dignity and Respect? We lost them in the "Thatcherite" years. I'll not blame the Iron Lady herself, she merely represented the thinking of an entire generation, but since then we're expected to be ambitious, self centred, self promoting and self sufficient. If you're not busy aiming for the next rung on half a dozen different ladders (the pay scale, the property ladder, a bigger car and better clothes, and so on) and shouting to everyone who doesn't want to listen about your achievements so far, its assumed you don't have any. If you don't shout about what you want, it's assumed you don't want anything. If you quietly do the right thing, nobody notices. If you don't lament all your problems to the nearest unwilling ear, you don't have any.

The paradox of a generation: we live in over crowded cities, travel on overcrowded roads and trains, work in huge office blocks packed with people and communicate with half a phonebook of people on a daily basis, and yet, as one, we feel so alone. It's us against the world, but it's precisely our determination to beat the world that has pitted it against us. We crave recognition and praise, but our determination to achieve this for ourselves means we rarely stop to give it to others.

Can we learn to appreciate a quiet sense of our duty to other people? Shouting about human rights, animal rights, consumer rights, women’s rights, and any of a whole number of other "rights" isn't "doing the right thing". Telling all the world loudly that you're being selfless and helping your fellow man every time you do something even vaguely for someone other than yourself isn't being selfless. Selfless is doing the right thing and expecting no reward, no recognition, and no thanks, just the private knowledge you did the right thing.

I'm not perfect, far from it. I don't stop to lend a helping hand to a stranger in need nearly as often as I should. I don't even feel like I stop to lend a hand to those I call friends as often as I might. But like everyone else, I want recognition for the things I do do. I don't want to have to point it out to you every time I do something, but I do want you to notice. I don't want to tell you all the problems I've faced, what I've quietly sacrificed in the name of "the right thing", what I've lost, what I've endured... but I do want you to realise that there probably are things in all these categories. My life could be far worse, but just because I don't appear to have any problems, doesn't mean I don't.

I don't want to tell you who I am. But I do want you to know. And the stupidity of that is clear even to me.

Working Day 2

As hectic as ever. It's a good job the 2nd working day in the month only happens once a month, I'm not sure I could survive it much more often.

I think I need to go lie down now.