Get Over It

Well, the world moved on in the last fortnight, didn’t it. The weather has shimmied and jostled from overpowering heat to moist and warm – at a pace quite alarming to most. I have gone from spending one night sleeping above the quilt, to the next tucked firmly beneath it – and that isn’t right, right? On top of that, the water people (you know, the people who supply the water) have said that it didn’t rain enough during the Spring, so we don’t have enough of a reserve. We dabble in a heatwave and suddenly we can’t have any water running for fear we might drain the local reservoir.

The football appears to be over, without being over. Only diehard fans would continue to watch after England got knocked out. It felt like we transitioned from a world where football dominated the TV, to one where you suddenly struggled to find out when the next match might be on. Are they showing the current matches as 2AM filler on ITV3? For me, it’s a relief not to have to hear those damned horns any more; but, I’m not listening to any excuses from the England team about their performance. Germany beat them because they were better, not because they’d had a bit of extra rest during the winter months. If England want a rest, they need to take unpaid leave from their clubs. Personally, I’d switch the current system to a pay for performance one anyway, where you get assessed and awarded points, like in fantasy football, and then you get a salary based on those points earned. If you get injured, you get a base salary – akin to a minimum wage. If you go through a dry period, you struggle – and you have a reason to work harder. Our footballers don’t have enough drive and energy because they’re not hungry for it. Our footballers have been coddled and comforted with all the luxuries money can buy and only get to know hardship if they end up in some catastrophic travel incident. They should want to score or defend our goal because their livelihood and comforts depend on it.

Finally, I have switched roles at work. I have been, in one form or another, a business analyst for the last 10 years. In my most recent role, for the last 3 1/2 years, this has become steadily harder to endure. I can capably do the job – indeed, some have said I’m good at it – but that isn’t the same as enjoying it, and over the last 6 months or so I have been enjoying it less and less. I can’t pin down exactly why, which makes conversations short when anyone asks me; but, I don’t think I want to pin it down to one thing. My discomfort with the role spins out of a myriad of factors, changes and people. So, I took the initiative and proactively went out looking for other things to do. I have applied for another role internally – a short term cover – but, in the meantime, I’ve committed to 2 month helping configure, style, fill and support a Drupal installation. Drupal is a content management system, which I have used in the past (along with a bunch of others like Joomla, phpNuke, myPHPNuke and, for that matter, WordPress). I’m faced with transferring the functionality of an old system onto the new system, where someone has already done part of the task. I have to determine what they’ve done, whether it can be done better, and then sort it all out – requirements gathering, planning and iteratively building the solution. I’m finding it makes for a change of pace, without making the leap from chartered accountancy to lion taming.


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