I try to get out for a ‘big’ trip every Mayday and Hallowe’en, pull Christmas at home and … well that usually eats all my time. This year, I had the idea to sit still for the summer and see… then offers impossible to refuse seem to sprout like weeds in my inbox and all of a sudden things like ‘a normal sunday at home’ become unusual times. This is far from a problem, I’m just shocked at how my year suddenly snapped into focus in the past month. This is that effect of ‘time passing more quickly as you get older’ right? I guess like sliding down an inverse parabola, its a barely noticeable slope… then all of a sudden you’re staring straight down and the bottom is flying up to you.

I’ve taken on an ambitious project, one that I’m not quite sure I’m up to – scepticism has been expressed – but I think its worth trying; the worst consequence of failure is just the lost time, success could be glorious… Fortune Favours the Bold and all that. I realise now that the culture shock of the past half year had knocked me into a defensive crouch and I need to shake that off and just get moving again – because to do nothing is to just let the time fall though my fingers – ending up in the same place as to try and fail but without the chance of success.

Let me take a moment to apologise for the inherent cryptic… rambly… nature of all this. Speak ye not aloud on the internets and all that but my point from all this is:
1. decision trees – they’re a great tool to sort out things :)
2. keeping a fairly detailed six/eight month look ahead has saved my bacon repeatedly in the past, I recommend it.

The flat is pretty ritzy. Views aren’t great but I don’t care. If I’m sitting on my terrace its because I’m reading the papers, so whatevers behind the papers isn’t important. I’ve inherited five planters filled with dead soil, I should stick some ferns or something in them but I’m not there yet. I had lots of fun trying to figure out why half my plugs didn’t work and half my wall switches did nothing (because the wall switches turn on the plugs across the room) but I got there in the end and bought floor standing lamps to be the ‘room lights’ for the study/guestroom. The rest of the people in the block are mostly little old ladies or women of a certain age so the under floor heating (centrally controlled) is set to furnace. I tend to come home and throw open the windows to purge the heat to a merely ‘stifling’ level.

Work has started to indoctrinate colleagues to cookies.

Guest capacity has been arranged; primary is study with fold out bed, lights and other reasonable comforts like curtains. Secondary is the living room. Where the couch folds out to a bed but there are as yet no curtains and the building across the road is a school. I’m getting fed up of people looking at me if I want to have my lunch on my terrace on a weekend; its a weekend; I’m fully dressed, its my balcony, y’all can fuck off. However, if you want to come visit and feel a compulsion to sleep in the nip; please let me know so steps can be taken.

The work is good, I was trying to think earlier about what I could be doing that would be better and honestly apart from doing exactly the same with a more awesome and sexy team, I can’t think of something; its very cool and interesting and the team is great but that they’re all up to their necks in kids so not much happening after hours.

It is the one thing I’m missing about PHC, the camaraderie and the age bracket of the peer group – there they were peers, here they’re a few years older and firmly on the ‘plus kids’ path. I guess its only to be expected, anyone who doesn’t have dependants has been packed off to somewhere grim. Life in the Village down south – everyone living with two minutes of each other – was also cool; genuine old school community. I can see how it’ll be like that here though once I get a grip on the language. Already I can recognise half the people on the bus in the morning, the staff at my local know my name, I run into people I know on the streets even though I know all of a half dozen people here. The French are somewhat like cats in this respect, they’re not very good with strangers but you just have to let them get used to you being there in the background and then they’re fine. Cats are an excellent reference for many things in fact. Hmm, there may be a lucrative self help book in there somewhere…

To conclude; have extricate myself from down south, Savage won the deadpool and am now ensconced in the land of fine wines and cheeses. Skiiing and Scuba are on the to do list after learning the lingo. Life is not to bad at all here.

Sure, if you’re not with La famiglia you’re unlikely to just be passing though – but Biarritz is just an hour up the road, Ryanair flies there too.

Thesis writing. Thankfully, I am not long under that particular burden. It really feels like having a heavy sack on your back. Each day you take a brick out of the bag and put it on the ground. The pile of bricks gets higher, but the weight doesn’t seem any lighter. The bag is with you all the time, you never get a break and you always feel like you should be writing or working — even when you’re out for a break after a lot of progress. The rub is, that I almost felt as bad when I was making progress because I felt the need to keep going more.

My status now is that I am awaiting a date for my viva voce. It should really have happened by now, but this process has been nothing but missed deadlines and remorseful “should-a’s”, “would-a’s” and “could-a’s”. I’m working, and at a job I really like, so it’s less of a burden.

But back to writing, apart from my incredibly insightful tweets, I am writing a lot. Proposals, papers and status documents take up a surprising portion of my days. It’s shocking how little technical time there can be in an ostensibly technical job. I can see how people get frustrated. It seems that you have to write constantly as an academic, that you have to sell constantly as a member of a startup, and have constant meetings if you’re in a big company. Communication is 90% of most jobs that I have seen, and technology is only 10%.

I’m sure that there are skunk-works labs out there where people can really spend their days with their text-editor of choice, not a care in the world other than compiler errors and ensuring the coffee supply is plentiful. It sounds nice, but I am sure even secret facilities have status updates, even if they are punctuated by mad laughter. In fact, the evil-HR departments probably impose a minimum mania level on their reports.

“Dr. Malevoface, this quater you have used fourteen percent of your allocation of manic laughter, but we have yet to hear you exclaim that the mainstream scientists who shun you are ‘fools’, nor have you submitted the mandator Gantt chart detailing how you will ‘show them all that the monkeysaurus is the ultimate doomsday weapon’. This is unacceptable, I will be forwarding a memo of concern to all nineteen of your line managers.”

Effectively all her time since college has evaporated – she has no work experience despite being 6-10 years in (not sure exactly). Rumour has it she’s working these days in a field that requires no higher education and given that my appealing physical attributes are nil, this for me would be bad.

Thus, the ongoing embargo of truly interesting stuff goes on. Apologies to all. Invite me over some time and I’ll tell you a story but I’m not putting anything online.

Onwards.

“I know someones happy with what I’ve been doing – but not who – and thus not what it is that is pleasing nor what I should be doing more of.”

Ye gods. I’ve got piles of notes, I know where the plots going, I can even visualise out the next scenes, know what should happen its all just waiting to be written. But motivation to do so …

Right! Right, thats its. Coincidentally on this night of pitiful wailing, it is also one calendar month before I come home for Christmas. Thus – I shall have an mark two draft ready for then. I will do corrections on the airplane. No more Fallout, no more Fall from Heaven – no loading Halo or Oblivion or Bioshock! No ordering more books (not more than the half dozen on their way already) – no nothing!

Fun time is over, time to write.

Wait, this was fun time?

Quiet you.

I agree – most of my family back two generations went to the US – by the numbers, I’m actually one of the tiny Irish offshoot of a large American family. They weren’t imagining they would be coming back much or ever unless they prospered on arrival. Are we too squeamish these days? Wasn’t too long ago that things were considered worth the price of human lives – are only wars worth it now? Where are the rocket ship test pilots, for instance.

Would you take a one way ticket to Mars as a colony pioneer?

I used to think that if I won the lottery — a small jackpot, enough to live on but not necessarily the “buy a house on every habitable continent” win, I’d take a lot of time off and teach knitting. I have not won the lottery, but I have fallen ass-backwards into a small-time teaching gig. It’s funny how these things work.

I say small-time because I don’t teach enough to pay the bills. It is just enough, however, to fund my knitting habit until we *can* pay the bills with real income. It’s incredibly satisfying. I love talking to knitters, and I love helping people with their craft. I didn’t expect to be implementing Plan B quite like this, but I can’t say I’m unhappy about the way it’s working out.