Where is the on/off switch?

Again, up in the early hours. It is nothing major I'm thinking about. A couple of flash forwards to March when I have the next Op. Some thoughts about what I'm going to say to my bosses when I see them next week and get my marching orders and that is about it. When I do sleep, I sleep for ages and as soundly as you like. But it is getting to sleep that is the worry. I'm not having coffee or anything late into the night although I used to be able to and still sleep. No alcohol and no other stimulant I can thing of.

I suppose it is a phase and with a bit of luck I'll get through this and end up with some other problem! However, a design with an on/off switch would be appreciated.

Productivity or distinct lack of it

Well - what did you expect telling me that I was "at risk" and being considered for redundancy.

I can't say that I've done anything constructive for work today apart from talk to some of my staff about their jobs which are thankfully safe. Me? I can work anywhere but I was so emotionally involved in the company's product and the people. Oh well, as I have learnt recently there is far more to life than this and it is just one of those things.

So I'm looking out for the high salaried, playboy job - you know looking after someone's yacht and going to every Grand Prix of the season etc. Somewhere there must be a job like that. If not I'd be rubbish at modeling tee shirts!

Another Day - another opportunity

Finally got to sleep about 3 and up at 9 so not too bad, had a walk feeling clear headed and have drafted my new CV and sent that out. I'll change around all my profile information on all my web sites and then set up the alerts so that those who know will know and I can start looking for jobs again.

I can't say that I was surprised really I wondered where the money was going to come from as early as November last year. Quantity over quality and a poor sales performance were bound to affect us further down the food chain. They'll have all found out now who is affected by the changes, I doubt it has gone down well they are a small family company in the middle of nowhere and I doubt it is easy to find work if they are let go from the business.

Anyway, it is an opportunity rather than a threat and it allows me to go back to running my own business again. At least that way I'm in charge. I've not sacked myself once in my tenure as MD :-) Perhaps I ought to - go on, I can take it :-)

Here we are again

Not that at this time of night I can actually do much about the situation or indeed worry about it too much. I have an interesting list of phone calls and things to do later today and I should get to bed so as to be fresh to do them in the morning but I can't be bothered at the moment. I'm old enough and experienced enough not to be too upset by all this sort of stuff, nor to overreact but it just goes to show, despite having expected this may happen given the loss of business just before Christmas it still comes as a blow.

I wonder what my team will make of it - they'll all find out tomorrow - it should make for an interesting afternoon.

Sod It

Here we go again - sort out the CV, re-launch the company and the web site and get ready for the interviews, and the type of work (contract or permanent). Bugger, just as I was getting stuck into this job too. Mind you, if they can't get the work then it's no use hanging around. Then sort out the pensions (I have only just spent the last 4 months consolidating those!)

Oh well, I suppose it still isn't as bad as 2006 yet :-) I suggest you do not ask me to select your lottery numbers this year!

Happy 2007 You Are Redundant

Nice! Welcome to 2007 and I'm back on the heap. At least I haven't got Cancer! Oh bugger....

Actually - not unexpected as there was no way they could continue to hemorrhage money and lose work the way they were going and despite the fact I bring some stability to the role, I'd have had to come to the same conclusion sooner or later. Bloody shame - great company though.

Tee Shirt arrived

My "I'm not dead yet" Tee Shirt has arrived this morning - brilliant. No one would buy it for me for Christmas so I bought it myself. It was pretty impressive as I bought it online yesterday and it arrived this morning.

For anyone who isn't sure - the "I'm not dead yet" bit comes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where people are being encouraged to "Bring out your dead" and someone gets thrown on the cart who isn't yet dead.

I feel like adapting the Tee Shirt to my own ends and for it to be worn at appropriate times and occasions!

Yesterday - a Screwy Day

You get days like that, it wasn't much different to any other day albeit that I learnt a friend had Lung Cancer and was under treatment for that. my brain just went into overdrive and as I was sat at the PC it was as easy to write it down no matter whether it made sense or not.

I hope today is going to be a lot less active than yesterday.

Yuk

I hate the way my brain works sometimes. It can bang on being "holier than though" it can be full of remorse, it can "not give a hoot" and it can tear you apart.

Bloody thing, I wish it would leave me alone sometimes, I could get on and watch EastEnders or Holly oaks then and understand them :-) Nah! What am I saying - I'd need 99% of my grey cells destroyed to understand those!

Watch out for your brain, it gives you no peace. It creeps up on you and tells you things are wrong when they aren't, it frightens you, it misinforms you and it scares you. Last night it was telling me that I probably had Bowel Cancer - today it told me it may have got that wrong. Trouble is I lost a lot of sleep worrying about something I know I don't have, nor do I have the symptoms of. Just what is the brain there to do? It doesn't comfort you or help you out much it sticks objects in your way and gives you complicated statistics to figure out or runs you through horrible life and death scenarios. Is it really meant to be doing that? Is it my brain or did someone implant it when I was in Hospital to constantly upset me, piss me off, challenge my feelings and paint the worst picture available?

I feel I'm fighting my brain more than I'm fighting the disease.

A Good Night Out

An early 2007 night out for some traditional Jazz. It isn't 'great' music but it is honest and down to earth stuff, good beer at reasonable prices, people who laugh at my jokes and asides (priceless) and just a good night out, no telly, no "reality sh1t" just some good musicians bashing out some songs and good company. It always seems a shame to me that people practice long and hard to be musicians and play wonderfully to unappreciative audiences.

Sometimes it is the very simple straightforward pleasures that are the best as well as those "spur of the moment" things and decisions. Long may spontenaiety continue.

It was good to be invited and to be reminded it was on; also so nice to meet some friends there both old and new.

Friends - An Amusing Christmas Present

A lot of people probably find it difficult to laugh at or with Cancer and also not everyone is exactly certain what to say to you. However your close friends know and so I was really delighted and had a good laugh when I opened a pressie on Christmas day it was a book:

"Taking The Piss - A Potted History of Pee" By Adam Hart-Davis and Emily Troscianko. I am just reading through the various chapters and it has some really interesting bits all about pee.

Well, you have to laugh - no really you do :-)

Fate Versus Lifestyle Versus Did I Deserve it?

I wrote this earlier and didn't publish it but then thought that the blog really ought to pick up on my "mindset" no matter what state it is in/ I'm a bit strange anyway - you just have to look at my collection of off the wall French film noir to see that. I think obliquely and laterally and sometimes if you are not on "my wavelength" or on the particular lateral thread I am thinking of at the time I say or write something, you will not get it and wonder why I am not under a Care in the Community Order. Be that as it may - it is probably worth publishing the stuff below so you get to see how your brain can drift off and think of the most absurd things.



This has been rattling around my head this afternoon. The earlier post where 25% of people felt that it was fate. I tend to sit on the 'it was my lifestyle' side of the fence and whilst I was considering that two things sprung to mind:

1. This time last year I felt that the time had come to change my lifestyle. I had come to a point where I had thought that all the harm I must have done to my body ought to be stopped, reversed whilst there was still a chance and I did do something about it. However when I look back and think how many years I thrashed my body and all the hours I worked and the drinking and smoking etc then there was bound to be a reaction. I had decided that as I wasn't getting any younger I ought to cool it. I was obviously far too late to do that. However, I have had a massive change in lifestyle and I feel better for it - I've not gone Vegan but I am just eating sensibly, regularly, not fasting or feasting (something I used to do regularly - I could 'not eat' for days and not sleep either). It all catches up with you.
2. The other thing I thought about was the "Did I deserve it?" argument and that is a bit of a strange one. I go back to the early days of Aids and the sorts of things that people said then and wonder whether anyone "deserved it". I perhaps brought it on myself and that cannot be denied so I think the answer actually is yes, I did deserve it. I knew some years back what smoking could do and I should have given up. The argument on whether we do enough to discourage smoking, how we argue that you shouldn't smoke in adverts and tax and other things can go on for ever and are subject for another day I think. I do reckon that I knew enough about things, had sufficient advice and could have made an informed decision. What I am certain about though is that smoking is addictive beyond a doubt and it is not easy to give up and stay given up. Someone telling you that you have Cancer is a very compelling reason to stay stopped though. On a last thought on this for the time being. All of my parent's generation and their parents smoked and it was in all the films and on TV it just beggars belief how we are reaping the whirlwind of that now not just smokers but all the passive smokers and those who were abused because they lived in the homes of smokers.

This all goes darker and deeper and is a real guilt trip for ex-smokers. Having brought this on myself and up to a point accepting that I injured myself I now have to face up to the possibility of actually harming other people - that really really does hurt and causes many of the sleepless nights and so much of the guilt isn't that I have Cancer, it is that I may have given it to anyone else. I can live with the former - I'm not sure I could live with the other.

It also occurred to me that when I was a child that I lived in a smoker's house and all my relatives smoked and everyone on the trains and buses smoked and so was it me or was it them.

And so, on and on you could go about this if you wanted. All these things play around in your brain whether you want them to or not. Then you start to consider the various facts that many people who get Lung Cancer (for example) have never smoked in their lives and you can then really start to get your mind swimming.

This is one of those rambling, nonsensical posts that will no doubt hit this blog from time to time. It doesn't mean anything really. It highlights the guilt you have as a "Cancer victim" and the guilt you then feel to others as an ex-smoker. It then goes on to look at your own victimisation as a child and these things go round and around in your head for hours at a time. I doubt there is anyone who just looks at it as an isolated thing at all.

I'm going to stop here as no matter what I write, or what I believe, this particular subject will just go around in circles. I guess it will resolve itself and each of the worries will find an answer sooner or later. Perhaps some never get answered or get answered at the last minute - who knows.

Today has gone a bit faster

At least today is going faster than yesterday - not that I am wishing time away you understand. I suppose because I now have some chunks of work to get on with helps.

Still a couple of hours to go but I reckon they'll disappear pretty quickly now.

I also hate Parkinson's Law so perhaps that is another reason that I find myself bored sometimes. Parkinson's Law is where you fill the available time with the work you have available. I tend to do the work and complete it as soon as I can. It can lead to gaps in work but I can fill those gaps with planning for the next lot.

Education

Perhaps that would help - you despair when you read this sort of stuff though from today's BBC Health section CLICK HERE.

Apparently 25% of people think that Cancer is down to fate - Oh please.....

Exercise Equipment

I am waiting for my Exercise Equipment to come. I hope that it will ensure that I make it a discipline. Yesterday, I was full of good intentions about going out for a walk and never got around to it. At least I can have the walk come to me this way.

Most of the household are back at work or school today so it should be a bit easier than yesterday at work. I hope it also goes a bit faster.

Is it the Longest Day?

Phew,

how long has today been - it feels like I have been sat here for days not hours. It is always the same on your first day back at work but this is ridiculous, its as if time has been somehow slowed down on purpose.

There is still another 45 minutes to go too. Blow this working for a living lark!

Loads more junk and reminders

Well the office is beginning to look a bit neater. I really didn't do a lot after the operations and so things got left in piles and, with the best will in the world, I really didn't feel up to anything like filing, throwing out and reading loads of stuff.

I'm surprised how much stuff there is accumulated on my desk and on tables and shelves. The recycling man is likely to get a hernia lifting all of this.

I keep finding the odd Hospital letter but at least I can get all that lot filed in a single place now too.

Having a Clear Up

A bit spooky - I just found last year's diary - the marker is still in the first week of July - after that there is not an entry at all - before that most days are completed with appointments etc!

I wonder what else I'll find in my piles of unfiled stuff?

Back to Work

It was hard work getting the head off the pillow this morning. The alarms went off on time and in sequence but the mind and the body didn't want to get out of their warm resting place.

Finally pulled myself around and walked the few yards into my office. A conference call in a few minutes should start the system back to normal and get things rolling.

I can't say that I am filled with my usual enthusiasm for the job at the moment. A few problems and some excitement will soon blow away the cobwebs.

Anti Climax

It always is after Christmas and you see in the New Year. What do you do New Year's Day - the same as you probably did last year or a few days ago, potter around the house, wash the car, clean up a room... Things go on just the same, perhaps I was expecting a huge adventure? Better not hold my breath then :-)