New Crayons

Started my new job today. Team Leader of the GIS and Information Team at Greenwich Council.  I have all the skills, the background and the personality to do this job.  I am completely prepared.  It is what I should be doing - a new challenge - a big project.  I remember how hard I worked as an undergrad and I can do that again, if I have a purpose.  I'd also never felt quite so unprepared today.  Me?  Lead a team?  You've got to be joking!  People who have been in the council since the dawn of time - doing things in exactly the way they do it because that's just how it's been done.  And I waltz in, from the outside, and I's gonna sort shit out and make this into a real team.  OMG - collect yourself!  I suppose it is true, the whole nothing to fear but fear itself, but fear is quite a fearful thing.  Well, I just have to approach it in small bits - be organised, be reasonable, be a pushy pain in the ass, accept what needs to be accepted and push for the things I can.  God I sound like a cliche.  Anyway, it really is what I need - I'd grown comfortable - didn't really try that hard  - I'd kinda forgotten what it is to work my ass off for something I believe.

In a job I suppose fit for a geographer, I will be crossing the Prime Meridian every day on the way to work.  I suppose there is something vaguely cosmically exciting about that.  Tomorrow will be my first day to bike there.  Today was, hopefully, my only day to wear a tie. ;-)

Anyway, just remember the most useful thing I learned from 8th grade - "just try not to trip, fall, pee your pants or make the fire alarm go off and you will be fine."

Good words, those.

And I just read about the Boston Marathon.  I don't know what to say, not at all.  Just horror and dread about what is now to come.