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Stuff, things and holy crap it's December
Dec. 28th, 2013 09:05 pmWay overdue an update, but that seems to be par for the course this whole last year (or two).
In brief: work is still in bureaucratic limbo, if a further along state of limbo than previously, though I have hopes that it should progress (finally) early in the New Year. I am now using them as a method of recompensing me for the way they're using me - things like taking advantage of meetings adjacent to weekends to use company expenses to part-cover visiting family and such - it's all above board, I just now have a bit more control over when meetings happen so...
It still continues to be a crazy workload and it's only going to get busier for the first few months as we being the countdown to the conference we're running in March (I say, we, but because of everything that's happened, I've done this solo from scratch, so how well it comes off (or not) will be a key thing). I'm supposed to be arranging a thank you dinner for my ex-boss, she'll be phoning me in the New Year - something to look forward to there I'm sure ;) I'm not sure if her power to wind me up is gone, I think so or at least mostly so, but then I've barely communicated with her since she left and only by email - in person might be another matter entirely.
Related to that, I really need to get my head around my self-confidence issues though I'm not quite sure how, but it needs to be done for a variety of reasons.
And related to the self-confidence: Aikido is having its ups and downs, I've stepped up my training a bit, but it doesn't feel like it's achieving much. I was at a course today - 5 hours - I ache rather a lot right now after all that Christmas gluttony and going straight into that. It was a good course, some great people to practice with and I took ukemi for all 3 sensei teaching, which is unusual. The biggest downside is that my sensei may have to move to Russia at some undetermined point in the future (could be months, could be over a year) - this has understandably thrown a big spanner in the works (not to mention being upsetting personally). Basically it's family (his wife's Russian), so there's nothing we can do here to prevent it or create alternative options. His current plan is that those of us remaining will set up a new dojo: given that the highest rank and therefore default teacher works shifts, this probably means I'll have to start teaching, which I'm really not comfortable with (for confidence reasons largely). In aikido terms, I've been of sufficient rank to teach for years, but I've never done the 1-day course to get the certificate which means I'm covered for teaching insurance. It's all a bit fraught really, so since it's something I have very little control over in terms of timing, I'm mostly trying to ignore it, it's not an ideal situation though particularly as I'm trying to gear up for a grading (which is likely to be early May apparently).
Last but not least: writing. Has gone appallingly. I've completed failed to keep the target I set myself at the beginning of last year. I've not written anything in ages - I'm kind of living in hope that when we finally get a third person in work then the workload will ease enough that I have brainpower left for things like writing and aikido and I can start progressing in the aspects of my life that are not work. Only time will tell now I think...
In brief: work is still in bureaucratic limbo, if a further along state of limbo than previously, though I have hopes that it should progress (finally) early in the New Year. I am now using them as a method of recompensing me for the way they're using me - things like taking advantage of meetings adjacent to weekends to use company expenses to part-cover visiting family and such - it's all above board, I just now have a bit more control over when meetings happen so...
It still continues to be a crazy workload and it's only going to get busier for the first few months as we being the countdown to the conference we're running in March (I say, we, but because of everything that's happened, I've done this solo from scratch, so how well it comes off (or not) will be a key thing). I'm supposed to be arranging a thank you dinner for my ex-boss, she'll be phoning me in the New Year - something to look forward to there I'm sure ;) I'm not sure if her power to wind me up is gone, I think so or at least mostly so, but then I've barely communicated with her since she left and only by email - in person might be another matter entirely.
Related to that, I really need to get my head around my self-confidence issues though I'm not quite sure how, but it needs to be done for a variety of reasons.
And related to the self-confidence: Aikido is having its ups and downs, I've stepped up my training a bit, but it doesn't feel like it's achieving much. I was at a course today - 5 hours - I ache rather a lot right now after all that Christmas gluttony and going straight into that. It was a good course, some great people to practice with and I took ukemi for all 3 sensei teaching, which is unusual. The biggest downside is that my sensei may have to move to Russia at some undetermined point in the future (could be months, could be over a year) - this has understandably thrown a big spanner in the works (not to mention being upsetting personally). Basically it's family (his wife's Russian), so there's nothing we can do here to prevent it or create alternative options. His current plan is that those of us remaining will set up a new dojo: given that the highest rank and therefore default teacher works shifts, this probably means I'll have to start teaching, which I'm really not comfortable with (for confidence reasons largely). In aikido terms, I've been of sufficient rank to teach for years, but I've never done the 1-day course to get the certificate which means I'm covered for teaching insurance. It's all a bit fraught really, so since it's something I have very little control over in terms of timing, I'm mostly trying to ignore it, it's not an ideal situation though particularly as I'm trying to gear up for a grading (which is likely to be early May apparently).
Last but not least: writing. Has gone appallingly. I've completed failed to keep the target I set myself at the beginning of last year. I've not written anything in ages - I'm kind of living in hope that when we finally get a third person in work then the workload will ease enough that I have brainpower left for things like writing and aikido and I can start progressing in the aspects of my life that are not work. Only time will tell now I think...
