Inherit the Wind

Well, not exactly.  Anyway, I just started week two of my role of minor jefe.  Trying to get myself into the mode of thinking "strategically".  That's going to be a new one for me.  Never actually really thought that way before.  If I see something and I understand something, I like to just step in and do it - not delegate.  What if they don't do it correctly?  How can I have it done to my exact specifications?  I think I am rapidly coming to realise that I am a control freak (who doesn't like to be known as a control freak) and it's going to be tough to step back a bit and direct.

I'm heading a team currently of four, which is set to grow over the next few years.  I'm the youngest and have been working for the council the shortest.  I'm the only one not local.  One person has been in his role, or one quite similar, since 1978.  Going to need to go about this rather delicately.  They seem like good people.  They take pride in their work.  They are also very direct and unafraid to fall back upon "not in my job description".  There I come with my newfangled silly big city ideas, policy documents, strategy and some such.  Have to admit I feel a little bit like the fresh graduate dumped into his first job, or trying to speak a language with real people in a real situation, having only learned it in a classroom.  Still, it's what I wanted - I've come to realise I'd actually been sitting in my little corner at work dying just a little bit each day, feeling like I would never actually get to do anything on my own.  Other people's projects.  Other people's ideas.  Other people's methods.  It's taken me, I suppose, seven years since leaving the PhD to feel I had the confidence to lead anything, or to convince anyone else of that.

I actually think it's the perfect situation in which I find myself.  Yes, I already miss being able to just make things work "because they are a good idea" - I miss being able to do something on my computer without having to write a business case for it and send in the IT troops.  I miss being in a team of people that like to pull apart a problem.  I suppose the flip side of that though was that I always felt a bit like the team dummy before - never quite able to get my head around a problem as the same was as others (whether or not that was true).  I don't know - I suppose I'm nearly forty and it's about time that I'm supposed to be the expert.  I still think though - good God - I'm suppose to develop the policy and I don't get to just sit in the corner and be grumpy and weird.  Well, I suppose I will still be weird - I am definitely the foreigner of the team - previous job was mostly foreigners, so I was rather unremarkable in that regard - not so now.

Unrelated - I went cycling out to Canterbury yesterday with Leonel - fantastic, hilly and beautiful ride.  There was a slight bit of ickiness on the train coming back in though.  We'd just left Bromley South and were going along at speed when the train honked briefly.  Then there was this sound coming along the bottom of the train - sounded a lot like driving through a really gloopy mud puddle at high speed, except chunkier.  The train shuddered to a halt and the passengers kind of looked around, wondering what that was.  Eventually came an announcement that the train had experienced an "incident".  That's never a good thing.  We sat for a while longer, watching the sun setting over Crystal Palace - wondering.  Finally, the conductor walked back along the length of the carriage, stopping to tell people individually what happened.  A jumper.  They had called the "relevant authorities" and someone would come eventually.  So, that was the sound of a body, or body parts, being ripped apart underneath my seat.  I wasn't actually sure how I felt and I'm still not.  Horrified that such a thing had happened.  Huge amounts of sympathy for the driver and the person's family and friends.  And a huge amount of anger and, actually, contempt.  How utterly selfish that someone would jump in front of the train, putting everyone's lives in danger, traumatising the driver and causing a whole lot of people a whole lot of inconvenience.  Maybe that's heartless of me and yes, I do absolutely understand getting to the point where you feel like the best thing to do is to end it all, but, well, do it quietly in your own home or something.  I probably shouldn't be a suicide counsellor...

Anyway, it's been an interesting week - will see how things pan out in the next few!

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.

Like, OMG, I am so sure!

So, yesterday I pretty much proved to myself that I haven't moved much past 12 year old girl phase when it comes to close proximity to hunky men in very little clothing.  I went to change in the locker room at the gym and this bit muscley Italian guy starts changing right next to me - strips off to nothing but his tight little red underwear.  I, being infinitely unflappable, entirely maintained my cool while putting on my tank top.  All went entirely well - lots of coolness points - until I managed to put my head through the arm hole of the tank top.  Shit shit shit - reverse reverse reverse!  Trying so very hard to not look like I was a complete spaz, I back off the shirt and manage to stick my head through the other arm hole.  AHHHHHH!!!!  Oh god just please let the ground open up and swallow me now!  Well, I'm sure he was completely overwhelmed as well - so much that he wasn't able to show his - overwhelmedness.  Yeah.  Anyway, I have some nice stamps in my stamp book!  Sigh.

I felt slightly better when, cycling home, some numbnuts cycling down the sidewalk darts out into the street, nearly hits me, ends up running along on top of his bike and then runs his groin into the headset.  "Idiot", I say, as I cycle off, on the road, feeling slightly smug.  Almost made up for being a complete numbnuts.  Almost.

Anyway, I have started trying to put over all the handover documents at work for my leaving.  I've got a month to do this and, honestly, it really doesn't feel like long enough.  So many things to finish!

Blah.

Partly yucky with a continued chance of yuckiness

So, we had spring for about 47 minutes last week, give or take.  The buds of the trees are starting to open, the crocuses are up, the daffodils are sort of up and my face and eyes were puffy and itchy in the wonderful springlike way I look forward to every year.  And then the wind changed.  Back from the east.  And now we're back to an easterly wind, slate grey skies and freezing temperatures.  Yay.  So, what is the best thing to do on such a day of ickiness?  Go for a bike ride of course (with the wind).  I spent today cycling out to Winchester - 83 miles, then took the train back.  Admittedly, it wasn't the nicest bike ride ever - cold and grey and trafficky.  I did finally end up on some proper tinyass country roads at about mile 50, but that was only after 50 miles of endless traffic tedium.  I had forgotten as well that there are many miles of MoD owned land to the west of London - mile after mile after mile of scrubby pine and birch forest with the occasional little sad town interspersed.  There are many signs advising not to pick up unexploded ordnance, as doing so might seriously shorten one's life.  However, and perhaps suprisingly, one can just wander off into these woods - probably unlike most American military owned land (though I doubt they look too kindly on walking onto a firing range).  Had my lunch on a downed tree in the piney forest - large explosions every 30 seconds or so in the distance.  Very bucolic.  Robin suggested that they use sheep as touchpaper (or perhaps they were blowing up sheep?).  Anyway, I need to try to plan a slightly better route next time.  Gotta go get ready for the week now.  Yippydoodah.

All Change, Please, All Change

So, I sit here, trying to think of what to write in the same way I would sit at the beginning of an essay - thinking, ooh, I need to go load the dishwasher, put my clothes away, reroof the house, run a marathon.  Kinda funny really, given that I don't actually have to have an intro or a conclusion, a plot, or even a point.  All I have to do is blather and God knows I can blather.  I suppose a lot of it is just the fact that I'd gotten out of the habit of writing, so I thought, OMG I have to write about every single exciting thing that has happened (or not) over the past x period of time.  That's a bit of a job - work, almost.  So I don't - I put it off, life passes.  I have amazing and astounding thoughts on, um, amazing and astounding things and time passes.  I forget about them - they become bits of mental lint, fluffing away at the slightest breeze.  My whole point of doing this was just to capture the random blatheriness of life, as it happens, to force me to pause for at least a second to comprehend.  Somehow I'm blowing through life at an amazing speed - it always seems to be Friday or Tuesday and I think how the hell can that happen?  My six month dental appointment seems to come up every month or so.  I know this is a "feature" of growing older, but it worries and upsets me, nonetheless, that I somehow, while in college, managed to do really quite a lot of studying, yet managed to have what felt to me like quite a full life.  Now, on the other hand, life seems to consist of a certain amount of boredom at work, commuting, gym and trying (usually in vain) to get enough sleep.  I think I managed to do about an hour of work in the back garden last weekend before it got dark.  Somehow I want to fit into this things like learning German and taking up piano again, but I just don't know how.  I didn't think I was that disorganised... I mean, my God, I make up my lunches (salads) for the week on Sunday night.  That's organised!  Anyway, I have a month left in my current job, after which I take on the role of team leader for the GIS team at Greenwich Council.  They don't really have a team at the moment, not exactly, anyway.  I sure as hell never thought I would be leading a GIS team in some random London local government, considering I discovered GIS pretty much by accident and always assumed I would be a teacher, a lecturer, a volcanologist, whatever, but not a middle manager in a monster sized bureaucracy in a small and silly country in the middle of the Atlantic.  Oh well, these things happen.  Oh, by the way - my recurring dream of trying to get somewhere via public transport, barefoot and in the snow (those elements are always constant, but the details change) has changed.  Now, it seems, I'm on a complicated road network - always the same complicated network (I seem to have it mapped out in my head, rather appropriately).  There is still always snow.  But now instead of trying to get public transport to some ridiculous and far away location, I'm in the back seat of a car, trying to steer it while looking over someone's shoulder.  So, I suppose it is moving from a feeling of disempowerment to being ceded control but being afraid of losing it.  Or something.  Maybe I need therapy.  ECT. ;-)  Anyway, I'm trying to do this over the blare of the TV and it's actually some scientific program, rather than Spongebob, meaning I'm having a hard time focussing on this.  Must try to get back to random and regular blather...

Back in the Room...

And we're back.  I suppose I haven't written anything for months in part because there haven't been a lot of huge life-changing events, in part because I've sort of felt like I have been waiting for something to happen and in part because it got to the point where I felt like I couldn't write anything because I had just too much to say (despite nothing happening).  I did actually write up a few pages from the Alabama trip, but they are currently sitting in a notebook, waiting to be transcribed.  I suppose that is vaguely ironic.  So is life.

Anyway, waiting for life.  I have this recurrent dream that I am trying to get somewhere - usually somewhere far away.  Often I am trying to take the Tube (or, at least, my own version of the Tube - far more complicated than the actual Tube).  Sometimes I am trying to drive - usually on some stretch of the same, interconnected group of highways I seem to have in my mind.  Usually there is snow.  Sometimes it is urban.  Usually I am barefoot.  Lately I have been having some version of this dream almost every night.  Every night it is different, but every night it is the same theme - trying to get somewhere far away using the most inefficient method possible, unprepared.  I've decided that this is work related - feeling like I am trying to get ahead to some unspecified better location while feeling unprepared. How many jobs have I applied for over the past few years (admittedly, most of them pretty half-heartedly, as I really didn't know why I was applying).  But - I have actually had one interview and am scheduled for a second interview for a GIS team leader job that I really want and that I think I could do quite well.  So - maybe, just maybe.  I've actually worn a suit.  I, who still can't manage to tie a tie properly, voluntarily gussied myself up in a suit.  Stranger things have happened, though I'm not too sure what.  I think it's the first job I've applied to in the past few years that I thought - yeah, I could do this, and yeah, I could actually make a big difference to this team.  I just have to be able to project that, rather then undermining myself in the interview, which is what usually happens when I manage to actually get that far!

I was back on my bike today - 72 miles from here to Ashford.  I mean, I've been cycling, but I've not actually been on a long ride for maybe a month and a half.  Between being away and then the weather being shit it just didn't happen.  Not too surprisingly, I've managed to pick up a few pounds, which I am now absolutely determined to get rid of (though more cycling and running - hell, I am not giving up on chocolate and cake - don't be silly!).  I've started cooking up my big rides for the summer already - definitely want to cycle to Andermatt for my 40th (not sure where I will start though - part of me wants to go from here, but the more realistic part of me thinks I should start in Munich or something a lot closer) and David and I have talked about a combined camping (RV), hiking and biking (David mostly hiking and me mostly biking) trip between Tromso and Hammerfest at the end of August.  I figure - we've been to the southernmost city in Europe.  Might as well balance it out with the northernmost as well!

So, I guess I've been being pretty blah lately, hence not wanting to do anything or write anything or try to move my life forward, but I've gotten bored with that now.

So - back in the room!

Hiking, by the numbers...

So, we went for a lovely hike today - a ramble, a stroll, what's that, a slog through soggy cow poop filled pastures and shoe sucking mud, a lovely walk through Surrey.  It was a very organised walk.  I found it on the internet.  One of the local walking groups created it.  Funny thing about these walking groups.  They are very thorough.  Very.  The directions were written out in loving detail, and, believe it or not, were, for the most part, correct.  Two tiny little flaws, however.  The first was their thoroughness.  As I'm the one that found the hike, it was my job to follow the directions.  This meant walking through mud, over branches, climbing over fences and trying not to trip on rocks while carrying several sheets of paper with over 70 highly detailed and precisely measured directions.  Try hiking and reading at the same time and not walking into an azalea.  It's difficult.  The directions were also very important because there was no accompanying map, and given that we were in the deepest, darkest depths of Surrey (home of rich people and Land Rovers), there was also no phone signal.  So, without the excessively detailed directions, we were pretty much stuffed, and would have probably gotten lost and had to eat each other, though I suppose that might not have been very likely.  Well, anyway, we would have gotten lost and gotten crabby and I would have gotten a bit load of crap from everyone else about my poor navigational skills, which is very nearly as bad as cannibalism.

Anyway, it was a lovely walk.  We took an early (for us) train down to Holmwood, which is just south of one of my favourite places - Dorking.  From there we meandered through residential streets before setting off across fields and eventually up to the top of Leith Hill, which, at 900 and some feet, is apparently the highest place in South East England, outside of Vauxhall on a weekend night!  (Ha ha!).  It was murky and a bit foggy, so the stupendous views from the top were a bit, um, limited, but still, it being England, there were clusters of muddy mountain bikers and several families sitting around on logs drinking tea and hot cocoa, purchased from the kiosk in the fairly ancient looking Leith Tower.  Apparently, the Danes got their asses whupped on Leith Hill back in 851, when there were probably fewer mountain bikers cluttering up the trails.  There was quite a bit more walking through forest, and then, very importantly, a pub lunch.  I have learned in the years I've lived here that an absolute prerequisite for a successful hike is the presence of a pub at some point.  A pub-less hike is simply a forced march through mud infested undergrowth and is always best to be avoided.  We kind of wussed out on the last 3 miles of the hike as it was getting late, we were very muddy, and we stumbled across a bus, whose imminent arrival only 30some minutes later surely saved us seconds or more on our total time.

It was a good day.  The weather was properly autumnal (slightly crappy but not overly so), the mud was of sufficient British hiking quality, the pub allowed dirty clothes and no one slipped and fell in the goo.

Tomorrow I'm off to cycle to Brighton and, hopefully, to get a few job applications done in the evening.  I made the possible mistake of getting a slightly narrower seat than I had before on my bike - I thought it was exactly the same, but apparently it's 1 size narrower.  I do sincerely hope that I'm not muffin topping over the edges the whole way there, or its going to be a very uncomfortable ride...