Update post

Hi everyone,

Not a lot of new news to share for today.  Another day of closing out files and doing handovers.  The highlight of the day was lunch being provided by the office in connection with a seminar on mediation tactics.  I'm going to miss the lunches at this job.  Although, I did kind of have too much, which is why this evening involved a long swim and longer walk to get the calorie consumption back in balance.  Still, I feel better for it.  Not for the usual reasons I feel better; this time it was really just because if you feel like life is sometimes a bit out of control (in this case, with a sense of drift), doing something just a touch unusual - like actually swimming - can be a reminder that you actually are in control, whether you realise it or not.

Which is why this evening I made a point of applying for a litigation job at an upper-mid tier firm I saw yesterday, for which I'd be well qualified.  God knows what Joni makes of me not having work lined up; I may need to outline just how freakin' dead the legal market is at the moment.  Hell, it actually made the pages of Lawyers Weekly just recently.  The jack-of-all-trades skillset life has given me isn't always useful, but I'm rather glad it's there at the moment: I may need it!  Added to which, I'm double-glad to be out of that stage where my whole identity is bound up with work.  I can think of a few people I know in the profession for whom being let go would represent the end of the universe.

Which says that I need to buckle down and get more writing done, since it's one skill I can call upon at the drop of a hat.  With that in mind, i was pleased to see this book that I'd ordered off www.betterworldbooks.com (for about 50c and free postage!) in the mailbox today -

From here

So I guess that's it for the moment.  I have a few things lined up tomorrow - will update you all then.

Hope all is well.

See you then

I've been a baaad blogger

Hi everyone,

Sorry for how erratically I've been posting lately.  No real excuse, apart from that some evenings I just can't seem to find anything of any substance to day.  Of course, then I'll go and say it over at dailymile or goodreads or MFP so I'm not sure that's totally true.  Although the last few evenings I've also been trying to bang out a 2,500 word piece for the American Bar Association's Workers Comp newsletter as well, which I emailed off on Friday evening.  Hopefully another one for the resume.

Anyway, it's been a good weekend.  This was the weekend of the course I mentioned a little while back; I now hold a Certificate in Foreshore and Underwater Archaeology!  I know, not a huge step on the road to a career reboot, but since I'm not in a position to go back to University for a couple of years, it's a good place to begin.  Added to which, it was a genuinely good course to do and most of the skills are transferrable to terrestrial archaeology too.  Score!

By the time it finished both yesterday and today, the blues were kind of hooking into me.  This is something I remember well from before I was married, and I guess was one of the reasons I spent a huge amount of time alone even then: after spending fun time with people, it made going back to it being just me feel kind of crappy.  Anyway, this evening I dealt with that in the usual way, meaning that after Mass I pulled on the Nikes and the iPod and got underway.  It worked as well as ever and I'm much more like myself now.

No skype this weekend: last night I crashed into bed at 9:30pm, and tomorrow I have a 9:00am meeting with a recruiter about a job opportunity managing a regional office of a firm.  Don't want to sleep in, which I've been doing a bit lately - largely because I'm pretty badly checked out of the current job.  You try to stay interested but at some point you know you're looking at the clock and thinking "come on 5pm".  Actually, also on the job front, I've just seen something on LinkedIn with another insurance firm in the city that's a good prospect.  I don't quite have a covering letter in me this evening but will shoot one off tomorrow.  I can't do worse than I've been doing: three knockbacks last week.

I guess that's enough for now.  I'll let you know how the discussions tomorrow go.  Hopefully they'll be despereate enough for someone willing to go bush that they won't ask why I've now jumped ship twice in two years.

Will keep you posted.

No cute title tonight, I'm afraid

Hi everyone,

A shorter post tonight, I'm afraid.  It's after midnight and I'm overdue for bed.

I've been on the compute the last couple of hours trying to track down jobs.  Disheartening is the word.  Looking at all the employment websites yielded almost nothing I'm even remotely qualified to do.  Even in my field of personal injury practice where my name is mud, there were only 9 ads to be found, and most of those were from recruiters which means there may or may not be a job attached to them.  I'd go back to my recruiter who got me this job but I have no idea how to explain that I'm now dreadfully unhappy in a role I was enjoying immensely when I saw him back in December.  To get back into workers comp I really need to drop out of sight for a while.

As long as I have enough cash to support the girls, of course, anything else is a bonus.  Still, it's very slim pickings at the moment.

The day wasn't a whole bunch better.  More examples of my own incompetence are coming to light every day and I know that the internal discussions in the firm will be "Stephen was a disastrous hire...".  I'm more than a little worried they'll conclude I'm a pure liability and cut my 8 weeks grace period off early.  I can only describe that prospect as "hitting rock bottom and starting to dig".

Well, no point giving up.  As I said before, as long as my feet keep hitting the floor in the morning, I can make things get better.

OK, I guess that's the update.  Hope all is well with yourselves!

See you tomorrow.

Late on a cool night

Hi everyone,

This one's drafted on my laptop from Shepparton - I'm presently offline and typing it in Notepad.  Shortly when it's close to time to skype with the girls I'll fire up the aircard and post it.

I'm skyping late tonight for two reasons.  One is that it's when the timezones align and I'm hoping my aircard will work better at night in the same way radio reception gets better at night.  And the other is that combining Joni, the girls, and my own family in an awake condition is something I'm genuinely not ready to do.

Today I've been kind of trying to hold the blue devils at bay.  I slept OK last night, meaning I only woke up once or twice (the average in the last few months is two to four times a night), and it's been a warm and sunny day largely spent outside.  But, mum's seems to be making a point of being cheerful.  I'm not sure if that's for my benefit, but it means she gaily talks a lot which one needs to react to, and which I'm finding an effort.  And Little Sister's fellow Michael has this demeanour where he seems to be channelling the older brother I never had.  Usually this wouldn't trouble me but today it was something which was having a "fingernails on blackboard" effect on me I'm afraid.  So, I've chiefly been spending meals looking down at my plate and keeping quiet.

Anyway, God willing I'll get a run in tomorrow morning and in that case the extra endorphins will set me to rights.  Seems a shame to waste a long weekend.

On a less broody note, today was Australia Day!  So, 225 years since the first settlement at Sydney Harbour!  I've deliberately avoided the newspaper coverage today because it's always the same every year ("Australia's the greatest place on earth" vs "How can you celebrate Invasion Day?") with a dash of republic / new flag / cause du jour thrown in.

It's also the 205th anniversary of the Rum Rebellion - the successful military coup against the government of Governor Bligh in Sydney - in 1808.  The rebellion was carried out by the New South Wales Corps, which later became the 102nd Regiment of Foot and took part in the occupation of Northern Maine during the War of 1812.  I've been doing some research for a friend of mine in Maine who's involved with the commemoration of the occupation.  I found that a surprising number of people either joined or received commissions in the regiment in New south Wales who were still serving in it when it was active in the US.  Unfortunately, the UK's public records office hasn;t been great at accessing relevant records by remote control, so there might be a limit to what can be done with this.  Mem: I should check and see if anything archaeological is being done in connection with this subject.  For once I might have something useful to offer!

OK, I guess there's nothing much more I can think of right now.  Sorry this isn't a more exciting post: my head's kinda not there.

=====================

Hi everyone,

I just got through a great skype with the girls.  They were in their little princess dresses (Rachel was Rapunzel and Grace Cinderella) and looked like they were really happy to see me!

The skype was great, but it made me so painfully aware of what I have lost.  Having faith is great, and I never want to lose it.  But there are times like this, when I wish it allowed the luxury of despair.  Knowing (which I do) that you are strong enough to push through painful times is a blessing, but sometimes it can also feel like a curse.

Well, no point dwelling on it.  I have the most beautiful and sweet natured daughters in the world, and already you can see the gentle and loving women they'll become.  And somehow, I know that when they're old enough they'll also forgive Daddy his failings.  So, there's still much to look forward to with hope.  As Ludwig Boltzmann proved, all things are possible with time.

Fired. Again.

Hi everyone,

I've had better days.

I woke at 5am and had some coffee and sat around at a bit of a loose end watching CBS's "This Morning" on Channel 10 until just before 7am, when I shaved, showered and got dressed for work. The morning was unremarkable, apart from that I spent a couple of hours preparing my defence for the meeting with my bosses and HR this afternoon.  I was feeling pretty good about it after I'd done it, and felt I could give a fair explanation for things and largely exculpate myself.

2:30pm rolled around and I strode down to the meeting room feeling pretty good.  I came in and sat down.  In hindsight, I probably should have grasped the significance that they'd already poured me a glass of water before I arrived.  Well, my main boss came straight to the point: the stuff up at work the other week was the last straw.  They were terminating my employment on unsatisfactory performance grounds.  Ordinarily they would be terminating me immediately, but as a grace would give me eight weeks notice.  So, I can work the next 8 weeks and attend interviews etc while I look for another job.  They allowed me to say what I had in mind to say, but the decision had been made.

I thought that this could happen but was still rather stunned and finished early for the day.

I didn't know what to do next.  I called Joni and advised her.  She was about as sympathetic as I'd expected her to be.  She still thinks that I can find another job like this one, which is unlikely.  Both my employer, and The Client, and the worker's lawyer know what happened, and the story will spread quickly, which means my reputation is basically wrecked and my chances of finding further work in my field are slim to none.

So, I've been scoping out what my other options are this afternoon and evening and went over a few options with Oldest Sister Economist through GoogleTalk.  I couldn't face my housemates, so dinner was eaten in my room for the umpteenth time.

There's no point giving up, I know.  As long as my hands and brain work and I can keep putting my feet on the floor in the morning, things can get better.  Say what you like about my Mum and Dad, but they didn't raise any quitters.

On rebuilding

Hi everyone,

It's about 6:15pm and I'm at the office.  I'm trying to figure out if I have any more work-energy left and I'm pretty sure the answer is no.

I've had better days.  The fallout from the missed deadline of the other week is progressing.  The Client will investigate what went wrong itself.  The partners of my section were meeting this afternoon to discuss the situation.  And the managing partner of the firm (in the head office interstate) will need to be told given there will probably be a financial penalty for the firm.  My own ultimate fate has not been made clear.

You can probably understand why I'm not a bundle of joie de vivre right now.  I'm afraid that this might be a genuine career killer.  I was dead lucky to get this job after the last one; if they ask me to leave, I really don't think my luck will work twice.

Which wouldn't worry me so much - hell, it would probably be a blessing delivered through a baseball bat - if it were just me.  But it isn't.  I still have a wife and children who are affected as well.  Now, that's a responsibility I'll discharge through any means I have to, up to and including giving $10 handjobs behind the Greyhound Hotel.  God knows I've never been afraid to work.  But I hate the thought of Joni thinking "Lord, why is my husband such a screw-up?".

Anyway, I had a good heart to heart with Oldest Sister Economist about it all over lunch through the magic of GoogleTalk which helped put it all in perspective

* * * * *

Sorry - At about that point I completely hit the wall and gave up for the day.  I came back here to the sharehouse, had dinner in my room, watched some TV and wrote a bit (pen and paper - rethinking some ideas, which I find easier to do if I can write rather than type).  I gave exercise a miss tonight.  My legs barely held up through last night's run and so a rest day seemed in order.

Anyway, the more I think about the work situation, the more like career death it seems.  Sadly, my field is a small town in a big city, and by the time the dust settles, I'll be lucky to hold my job, and will be unlikely to find work anywhere in my field in Melbourne.  Realistically, I'd need to think about going somewhere like Shepparton or Albury or Warrnambool.  Which would be great if all this were happening about 9 years ago.  So, it looks like my career reboot in history/heritage/museums/archaeology/old stuff will need to take shape fairly swiftly.  Which, in a way, feels like I might be on the right track after all: Tiffany, over at Figuring out the Plot, told this story about the founding of Notre Dame University -

"Let no one ever again say that we dreamed too small."  ~ Father Jenkins, President, University of Notre Dame
...

Father Jenkins spoke the words above during his induction as President of the University of Notre Dame.  A college that was started by one 30 year old French priest named Father Sorin.  A man who didn't like to be told what to do and a big dream.  He built a one building college for priests in rural Indiana.  And then, it burned to the ground.  On that day, Father Sorin said, "“I came here as a young man and dreamed of building a great university in honor of Our Lady. But I built it too small, and she had to burn it to the ground to make that point. So, tomorrow, as soon as the bricks cool, we will rebuild it, bigger and better than ever.”  And the next day, once the bricks cooled, they did just that. 

So, it looks like it will be time to rebuild.

I can do that. 

More tomorrow.

A few thoughts ... and some pretty nice photos ...

Hi everyone,

Typing this at about midday on Sunday.  Later this afternoon I'll need to get on the road for Melbourne.  I'm not going to lie: I'm really not looking forward to going back to the office tomorrow and sorting that shambles out and wondering if they'll fire my arse for negligence again.

The only lesson I can draw from this is that I wish life came with an instruction manual.  Even when I left university at the end of 2001, I kind of kept functioning as if I was still a student, in the sense that the working year was for working, essentially every weekend, evening and every waking moment.  Rest and relaxation was reserved for the annual summer break.  So, in effect, I wasn't living so much as merely functioning.  I could not have said that, in any credible sense, I was "owning" my life.

Possibly I wouldn't have gotten into that cycle if I hadn't so determinedly pushed the limited number of friends I had away.  You can really only learn about how to function in the world by being in the world.  Being in the world really has to consist of something more than going to work, going home, occasionally going to the farm, and dreaming about all the great things you'd do if only you weren't so busy at work.  On that note, I wish I'd begun blogging years ago: meeting the great people I've met through blogging has really opened up a whole new set of ideas for me.

No point moping about lost time though.  Hell, I hope that I'm still learning more and more about how to live even when the Grim Reaper is breathing impatiently down my neck.

From http://www.bored.com/comics/grimreapergardentool.html

Ancora imparo indeed.

Anyway, life-ponderings aside, I've spent part of the morning taking some photos around the Casa Parental.  I've also been reviewing the other photos I've taken this break that are still on my phone; here they are for your viewing pleasure -


So, you don't feel like a cigarette?

Dad and Michael decanting gas from a large bottle to a small bottle.

Dad's old drilling rig awaiting an overhaul

The rig in question is a Hydromaster 500, built by Overall McCray Pty Ltd in Sutherland, NSW.

Local councils here like to get their name out ... including on rubbish bins!

Every time Joni dealt with a Shire council over here, she was kind of waiting for a hobbit to appear.

Some of the bushland on the Shepparton property

Dad looking photogenic at the shearing shed at Shepparton

At this point I was running out of things to photograph at Shepparton

The bed I was sleeping in.

Looking back up to the spine of the Peninsula

The garden at Flinders

The apricot tree -

The new lemon tree

The yellow rose bush

The pink rose bush

In between starting this post and finishing it I drove back to Melbourne, bought some basic groceries and unpacked.  Not much to report except that I dodged the holiday traffic returning to the city - dead pleased with that!

More later.

Wednesday already??

Hi everyone,

Sorry I've been a little patchy with the blogging the last few days.  As you can probably tell from the title, it's been an incredibly busy couple of days, between working flat-out during the day and exercising a lot during the evenings.  The exercise is partly for health reasons and also because it seems to give me a good kick-along during the day.  Kind of, run the brain to empty at the office, then go and pump some fresh blood into it in the evening and recharge it.  All of which is great but does mean I haven't written anything more than a very short - and I suspect abortive - history piece about the recent demise of the town of Quitman, Missouri.  On the plus side, one of my news alerts told me of pending changes to the Oklahoma workers compensation laws, which has prompted me to send an email to a legislatrix there seeking further information and which might, perhaps, offer me the chance to get my name out there and keep building the contacts.  As I see it, it's critical I keep moving forward with the move plan and don't let it drift.  I don't want Grace and Rachel to think I'm over here because I don't care about them.  I want them, when they're old enough to understand, to know I came across as fast as energy, earnings, and a somewhat restrictive skill-set could achieve it.

This evening's exercise was swimming at Melbourne City Baths, to give my legs a workover and also not to pound the crap out of my knees.  I got to a new record of 46 laps (1380 metres).  If it hadn't been near closing time I think I could have got to the mile!  Well, next time.

I'm pleased to report - and a little surprised - that the attitudinal change I blogged about the other week  appears, genuinely, to have stuck.  I've never felt this durable before in my entire life, or this settled, or as comfortable inside my skin.  I'm struggling for a simile here.  It's as if, having worn a too-small wetsuit for year, that crushed your muscles and restricted your breathing and wouldn't let you stand straight, you'd finally taken it off, and felt the sun on your skin and your joints free up and your lungs fill, as strong and free as a Mallee bull.  I guess I sound like a broken record, but I wish Joni could see me like this, and not like I was when I was falling apart.  Well, no point brooding over it.

I should close this and go and have a shower and wash this chlorine off and get some sleep.  Thankfully tomorrow is an appointment and meeting free day, which is just as well - two advices to crank out and a Mount Everest of medical records to wade through.  Starbucks card on standby!

See you tomorrow.

The changes that are good.

Many of us are controlled, knowingly or not, by assumptions. I think the biggest problem I ever had was that I came to assume I had no right to anything better than wherever I was at that particular moment.


When a lot of the voices you hear throughout much of your life tell you how second rate and contemptible you are (school and university, for instance), eventually you begin to take them seriously. And when the voice telling you those things is your own, it creates a self-sustaining demon. Because you accept as an article of faith that "something better" is not something you're entitled to, every experience you have tends to confirm this belief: it being the natural lot of humanity that many of our experiences are negative ones, you feel that you had them coming to you; should something good happen in your life, you automatically assume it was a fluke or a mistake. 


All of your actions tend to validate this state of mind: because you assume you don't deserve to do other than fail, you learn to tolerate and make the best of crummy things, not because you're a simple man and like them, but because you can never persuade yourself that there's an alternative.


How does this work in practice?  In my case, I assumed (for example) that I wasn't someone who would or could live somewhere good. That such a thing could be my life simply did. not. enter. my. head. This is why I voluntarily lived for several years in a small, fairly dingy flat. I assumed I couldn't have a good car, or aspire to own one that wasn't a pile of junk, and so I persisted in owning, one after another, a second hand Laser and then a Corolla, one of which had a slowly dying engine and the other of which was slowly morphing into the world's fastest pile of rust. It never occurred to me I could do any better. And it's also why I persisted in sleeping in a single bed despite something larger being well within my purchasing power.


I was marginally more sophisticated with work. I'd never done especially well at law school and only landed a job through personal connections. I always simply assumed that I would fail if I went to a bigger firm or a better job, and so I stayed in a poorly paid role that I found largely unsatisfying and which in the end drained my will to live, until an encounter with a very energetic recruiter resulted in a hiring process that took on a life of its own. I'd been to job interviews before then, sure, but I think potential employers can tell when you don't think you deserve the job: if you don't think you're a serious candidate for a role, there's no reason for them to think differently. This was something that I think my wife found incomprehensible and exasperating by turns: she would tell me I was a good and talented lawyer, and I could do better, and I'd either leave her feeling like she was talking to a brick wall or have a scrolling list of reasons why I would move but not yet.  This was, as it happens, the first issue which brought out how difficult my sometime issues were for her.  I'd been to a disastrous job interview on the Wednesday before Easter in 2009, and was pretty upset about it when we went to Lorne for the Easter weekend.  We had quite an intense conversation about it one morning on that trip.


Inevitably this belief made things bad romantically as well. Before my wife, I never thought I was the sort of guy who "deserved" (in the sense of, had a chance with) any girl, and so I either didn't try or tried in the most lame and half-hearted ways. I don't in any respect regret meeting, marrying and building a life with my wife, but I can understand why sometimes she must have wondered what was in my head. How can you believe you're the most important thing to your husband when all his life he's settled for anything he could find?


This is why I failed to cope when our girls were born. When the hard work began, of paying for it all and being an active and involved parent, being and achieving "better" (financially, time wise, personal attitude) stopped being (for want of a better word) optional and became vital. And because I'd spent forever convinced I could never achieve anything "better" for myself or anyone else, I didn't achieve it, and increasingly I unravelled at the gap between what was needed and what I could produce. That this same gap between what I considered myself capable of being and what I needed to be lead me to disaster at the old new job: while there were other factors, a near-complete lack of belief that I could be better in the way that I wanted to be was a big nail in the coffin.


This was, intriguingly, something I mentioned to the psychologist who my wife and I saw for marriage counselling, when I talked about being afraid to ask for things at the old old job despite my boss' approval being more or less guaranteed. I didn't recognise it then but this belief was clearly what I was referring to.


Something changed about me where this belief is concerned this year. I'm not sure when it happened. Maybe when I started writing more. Certainly when I began the new job. And maybe (I know this will sound weird) when I started updating my LinkedIn profile, which is kind of like getting a huge high-five from yourself as you realise you're a better and more competent person than you thought you were, and that even what sounds like a boast isn't a boast when you can reliably back it up. For the first time that I can remember, "better" in my life feels like it's there for the taking. I don't think I've changed exactly, and I'm sure the world hasn't changed. But one thing has changed. I guess it's that I'm not afraid of everything any more.

The other thing that has changed is that for the first time that I can remember, I feel comfortable inside my own skin. Yeah, I know, it's a cliché, but it's the truth. I'm not perfect - I could have been a better husband, but I think I was as good as I could have been. I'm not in a position to be the father I thought I would be, but I can still be a pretty good one if I try.  And yeah, I'm a bundle of apparently mismatched pieces - the intuitive historian in the highly non-intuitive legal profession. Someone who loves American football and pre-Reformation music. I could pull apart and put back together a Ronaldson-Tippett engine given sufficient time, tools and unlimited amounts of WD-40, but also discovered on reading the shoe-heavy post of another blogger that I had an opinion about them (for the avoidance of doubt, I didn't want to be wearing them, but I did think they looked great). I'm good with going to the National Gallery, and also with going to watch the judging of Maine-Anjou cattle.


What I've come to realise is that all these pieces don't have to fit together in any particular way, and certainly not in a way to forces them to be seamless. If you relax and stop trying to force the different parts of who you are to fit together, they'll just settle down together in a way which you can intuit, if not actually understand or explain.  You'll really only come to grief if you do try and force them to fit together, because inevitably you'll find you're denying part of your own nature.  There's nothing wrong with bringing one of these pieces to the fore at a right moment and letting the rest slip into the background (one would not, for example, get into a deep discussion of the economic roots of the English Renaissance at the Pakenham stockyards), because that's the essence of being a whole person.  The word person, it's worth remembering, comes from the Etruscan word phersu, meaning 'mask'.  Everybody presents different masks (or sides of their identity) depending on the surroundings.  The only people who are completely consistent in the face they show the world are those with just one side to their identity.  Someone like that can only be a dreadful bore at best and a madman at worst.


I should add that this is something I'd never have figured out for myself without the help of a lot of truly awesome ladies (yes, all girls) who've been supporting me on the bumpy road that 2012 has been. Most of you read this blog, so take a bow JF, HD, KT, GD and SL. Thanks to you I can fist bump Popeye and say calmly "I yam what I yam!"

This year, as I said, has been a hell of a bumpy ride, and of course, there's a lot of things in it that I wish had gone differently. But then again, looking purely at what has come out of it for me, and the person it's let me become, I find it hard to regret it. As the sages who wrote Red Dwarf pointed out: "If you're gonna eat tuna, expect bones".


It seems strange to say it after a year in which I haven't held my beloved daughters for 12 months, and in which my marriage has run aground, I've been fired, had a full-fledged meltdown in front of one boss, spent countless evenings at the office and spent a fair bit of time  in some pretty dark places, but looking at all that has happened, and all that the future might hold, I feel like I'm probably the most blessed man who ever drew breath.

Tomorrow will be another beautiful day.

Hi everyone,

This post will be shorter than planned.  It's 12:30am, and I'm trying to go to bed earlier than I have been lately (as a rule, about 2am).  So, I'm uploading this in place of the post I'd planned as I've spent the last hour or so trying to get blogger to upload the photos I'd like to share.  Anyway, I'll put that post together tomorrow night when I have a little more time.

It's been another quiet day of settling advices and reviewing medical material here.  As I think I said the other day, one of the up sides of the new office I'm in is that it's fairly quiet and I can have ABC-FM or the Country Hour on if I want to.

I decided against running this evening in place of some exercises from the book I bought from the throwout table at Officeworks the other day -

The exercises in this are seriously good.  Yeah, I know, I'm not their target audience.  I don't care.  I'm feeling pretty good about life these days - I'm enjoying my work, I'm writing more and better than I have in my life, and my head's screwed on straight which is kind of amazing after the year I've had.  Why shouldn't I put this whole bundle in a healthy body too?  Mens sana in corpore sano.

Tomorrow is another quiet day - like to be sending the advices from today to the Client after review, and cranking out a brief and court book.  And hopefully go for a swim at Melbourne City Baths after work.

See you tomorrow.

Another placeholder ... sorry ...

Hi everyone,

Sorry: I still haven't made time to do the weekend recap I promised (nor another great post which is at the back of my mind).  Sorry!

I'm not going to do a political recap tonight - more than enough ink will be spilt on that subject and I don't imagine I'm going to say anything especially novel about it.  Although the classiest comment of all came from my friend Kris, a rusted-on Democrat, who commended on Facebook -

I feel sad for everyone that loses. What a let down they must feel.

That is how a good winner talks.

My own  day was difficult - trying to work with about two thirds of my brain on the files and one third on the election results.  As most of you know, I'm not one of nature's multitaskers.  Went for a run in the evening - from the Casa to Trades Hall and back in a big loop and finally felt my legs kick in - that awesome feeling when you're running as strong and effortless as Makybe Diva and feel like you could go forever.

Anyway, that took an hour and was about 6 miles.  So, I'm feeling pretty good for the run on Sunday!

Anyway, it's 1am and past when I said I'd be in bed by.  Hope all your days are going well!

See you tomorrow.

Sunday

Hi everyone,

It's been a quiet Sunday, and sadly it's been spent stuck at the office again. This time for an advice I was planning to crank out tomorrow, until I was asked to help out a double-booked colleague by running a Magistrates Court matter for him. So, I've done the advice today and tomorrow I'll probably ask my secretary to prepare the material to serve on the other side.  I say 'probably' because her work tends to be pretty sloppy and the last few times she's done something for me, she's done it so badly it took me as long to fix it as it would have done to do it myself from scratch.  Still, I mentioned this problem to the partner-in-charge last week and this might be a good way to segue into some performance guidance.


I read a really awesome blogpost the other day over at Figuring Out The Plot about the need to dream big.  It‘s kind of topical for me given the whole failed marriage situation, in a "God closing a door and opening a window" sense. That is, one road in my life has been closed off, presumably so that I have to take another.  While I'm taking that extra road, I might as well make it something awesome.  I could be jaded about this except, when I look at where I am now versus where I was at the start if the year, I can see that being let go from the last job was, truly, a blessing in deep disguise! Anyway, in line with the "dream bigger" theme I decided to sign up for my first semi-competitive run, the Sunday Age City2Sea.

 

Now, I know this isn't exactly quitting my job and going to live in a yurt on the Mongolian steppes, but it's surely something I've never done before.  It's 14kms, which I've done before but which is near the limit of my longest runs. And it's two weeks from today. You may assume that bright and early tomorrow I'll be pulling on the Nikes and cranking the iPod. Need to get into training!  I should add that it has the bonus of letting me do some fundraising for Autism Victoria, which some of you will know is a cause dear to my heart.

Aside from signing up for 14kms of pain, the day was, as I said, office based.  For my sins I failed to get along to Mass.  I eventually finished the advice and tidying up by about 9pm and got some groceries on the way.  Sandwiches for dinner.  Fortunately this should be a relatively quiet week so things should get back to somewhat normal.

See you tomorrow