Valley of the Trolley Dollies

Well, there it goes; all done.

Christmas and New Year - a strange, coughing sneezing cold-infested couple at that - have come and gone, and we’re back to reality.

We had house guests and parents, and a very nice - if quiet - time was had by all. We saw some theatre, sang along to some carols, and, by and large, managed not to die of TB, or whatever nasty bug has been plaguing the country since mid December.

The 2^nd of January was D’s sisters 40^th Birthday, and saw me, at 11:30pm, curled in the foetal position, shivering and coughing. Not, strangely, because of any bad trip or excessive alcohol consumption, but because I’d finally fallen 9and how) to the march of the Lurgie.

And I’m back at work today - still a stew of germs, but working through it. The plan, this week, is to get up, go to work, go home, go to bed, and try to clear the system of the virus. This means I won’t be consuming the vast quantities of leftover booze (we had a house full of relative t-totallers, combined with the fact that any desire to consume alcohol was cancelled out by the plague we all had at one point or another.

Parents went home yesterday, and I miss them already, but it is sort of nice to get the place back to myself, and start to think about what “Normality” is going to mean this year.

To start, it’s going to mean that I still have a job - in Investment Banking - at a time when thousands of people don’t. It’s a job with an agenda which is largely self-set, which is good too; and it’s one which management have just given me a glowing Review on, and which they’ve assured me will be around - and in demand - for a good time yet. But it’s also going to mean that, whilst I’m still earning a lot of money, it’s a lot less than last year. But you know what? It’s a job, and the shift in focus away from the desperate chasing of ever increasing sums of money means that I can really work on making the Job just that, and consciously make my Life a better, more holistic mix.

One good thing about the job is the way they push the idea of “Working from home.” I’ve made great use of this one in December, what with the prep for Christmas and the parent’s visit. I work just as much, but save on the two hours (minimum) commute each day, as well as being able to pop down and get some household chores done (laundry in the machine, dinner in the oven) and I’m looking forward, this year, to using the WFH idea to make Life even better than it is.

Because it is better: “Glass Half-Full,” is how D’s been describing it. We’ve got some bits and pieces to sort out - the house, by and large, is falling apart around us; springing leaks, overflowing with junk, in need of decorating, but none of these things is life-threatening, and, right now, I have so many things to look forward to. 

Things I’m looking forward to:

(more…)

It’s been a while since I wrote, hasn’t it? Well, I’ll make no apologies.

A year ago, I changed jobs, moving from my small boutique Japanese house (Bamboo Splinter Capital) to a Ma-hooo-sive British Financial Behemoth (Feng Shui Corp).

At the end of the first week, I felt like this (roughly: “This is a zoo; I’m in over my head; I’ve got to keep going, ‘cos they seem to think I can do this, but I have my doubts).

At the end of the first three months, a period during which I had been overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the place and it’s challenges, I felt like “I can’t fix this place. But they don’t expect me to fix it. all they want is for me to fix the piece in front of me, then move on to the next, and the next, and so on…” And it felt better. I felt better.

The last couple of weeks - almost the biggest challenge I’ve seen in 20+ years in this industry - not quite as hard as going to work at 10pm on Sep 11th 2001 and working night and day for a week whilst not knowing which of your colleagues were alive or dead - has been an emotional rollercoaster.

It’s only money, this collapsing of banks. But behind this money are people - people like me - whose jobs are gone, whose lives are possibly ruined. And me - softy that I am - I can’t easily disassociate from that fact. So I end up in a rather stressed condition.

 On the 6th, I sent this email to a friend:

I spent yesterday throwing up.

Ha ha. My friend Ennis just sent his:

the questions kate mccann refused to answer have just been published.

she is such a lying, no commenting old cow

shes lied and evaded so much it woudlnt surprise me if maddy never exiisted and she just spent an hour on the old photoshop.