Today may well be my last blog post for 2012. It is certainly my last working day for the year and I will not be required to return to my place of employment until the start of February.
It has been a good year albeit a little uninspiring but I battled through without any major problems and life has been a good, steady, if unspectacular ride down the funnel of the year.
I was of course in New Zealand on January 1, 2012. Seeing in the New Year in the Land of the Long White Cloud was something different but on my return to Australia life returned to it’s normal stable pattern.
Work has been atrocious, the management of staff by the facility bosses the worst I have experienced in my 25 years of service at the place. I could go on and on about the deficiencies in the company I work for but I would be here forever and it would bore my readers to tears and at the end of the day there is nothing I can do about it. I don’t think it is going to get any better any time soon.
The thing which has kept me sane and on an even keel is the fact that nowadays I try not to get too worked up about things that I have no control over. There are decisions made and deeds carried out which, if one really wanted to, could be overturned and resolved in a more balanced matter but I am not a person who wants to keep fighting battles all the time. It is too stressful and I ask myself why we should have to stack on a blue all the time just to get the right decision made when the correct course of action or appropriate behaviour should be obvious to anyone with half a brain or a shred of empathy towards others.
I worry about the future and the culture which is developing in my workplace and I look ahead and shudder a little because the wind is picking up and we are heading into a squall and those tilling the helm I have no confidence in. Not for nothing do some on the floor refer to the place as “Titanic 2”!
Perhaps it’s me. Perhaps I am the one with the bad attitude, the one who needs to look at himself and find a little more integrity, a more open minded disposition, adopt a more corporate attitude. Be more of a team player. Alas, if that be the case then I am a lost cause because none of it will be forthcoming from this player in the tawdry game in which I contend that runs for eight hours, five days a week.
The company wants to make it’s staff more efficient, more accountable, to get more out of it’s workforce for less. There is nothing wrong with that. It is a competitive world and those who don’t adapt go the way of others who failed to see which way the wind was blowing.
But they don’t understand that a repetitive, boring job encourages lethargy and good leadership is required to keep the place running in a manner which they would prefer. It just doesn’t happen. Provide the leadership and the proletariat will follow.
I said to someone yesterday that the company would be better off starting from scratch. I said that he, myself and the rest of us have been there too long. We can’t adapt to the new mentality flowing through. We are dead wood. The company is better off cutting it’s losses and paying us out. Start out anew. If they want to run the place like a concentration camp it won’t matter. The old hands who would oppose their behaviour would be gone. But nothing as congenial as that is likely to happen.
So as I head off into my holidays, my morale is a little tattered and I look forward and hope there are better days ahead at work but I get the feeling that I my be stuck on a rudderless boat being pitched and tossed in the rough ocean without recourse which would enable me to return to more navigable channels.
Of course I have spun my own web, dug my own hole, charted my own destiny, I have no remedy for my malady.
What else is there to do? I see public servants heading to work everyday, cogs in the cluster of government, an essential tool to keep society running yet there is no happiness in their demeanour, they are just as blaise and disinterested in their jobs as I am as are others in professions which require work to be done for others. Perhaps there are more people out there who enjoy what they do than there appears to be but we are all just specks in the Cosmos being drawn along by forces which we can’t control. How powerless we are.
I like to write. I like to squirrel myself away and ramble on and I know a few of you come with me on this road through my soul and I appreciate it. It is my creative outlet, a salve to the boredom I suffer in my working life. When I have been long gone it will still be here. A monument to my little life on this earth. I am happy with that.
And so this post has ended up being something different to what I had intended. I had meant to give a rundown on my year as it unfolded but has ended up a diatribe against corporate fascism and and seems to have wandered from there into the ethereal, like a laser through my head and into my brain. So be it.
I am looking forward to 2013 although I realise I am getting older and past the age where I can make a difference in the world. I know time is slipping as I am now far older than the cricketers I watch on television; I remember watching the game and the players were much older than me, like gods or heroes from the romantic past. Now they appear to me as kids, just beginning on their own road to glory. I know they enjoy their profession. Good luck to them!
I hope to find something from this life in the next twelve months which will inspire me to greater deeds. I intend to go to Europe sometime later in the year. Life is short and unpredictable and the thought of never returning to England, never seeing Paris or Rome, never visiting my great uncle’s resting place on the old western front is too much for me to contemplate. I intend to live a few dreams.
So if this is indeed my last post for the year I wish you all well and encourage you to reach a bit further in life, to strain for what you want, take a risk or two, do things you wouldn’t normally do. Make a life and memories to look back on. Most of all, have fun.
See you in 2013!
It has been a good year albeit a little uninspiring but I battled through without any major problems and life has been a good, steady, if unspectacular ride down the funnel of the year.
I was of course in New Zealand on January 1, 2012. Seeing in the New Year in the Land of the Long White Cloud was something different but on my return to Australia life returned to it’s normal stable pattern.
Work has been atrocious, the management of staff by the facility bosses the worst I have experienced in my 25 years of service at the place. I could go on and on about the deficiencies in the company I work for but I would be here forever and it would bore my readers to tears and at the end of the day there is nothing I can do about it. I don’t think it is going to get any better any time soon.
The thing which has kept me sane and on an even keel is the fact that nowadays I try not to get too worked up about things that I have no control over. There are decisions made and deeds carried out which, if one really wanted to, could be overturned and resolved in a more balanced matter but I am not a person who wants to keep fighting battles all the time. It is too stressful and I ask myself why we should have to stack on a blue all the time just to get the right decision made when the correct course of action or appropriate behaviour should be obvious to anyone with half a brain or a shred of empathy towards others.
I worry about the future and the culture which is developing in my workplace and I look ahead and shudder a little because the wind is picking up and we are heading into a squall and those tilling the helm I have no confidence in. Not for nothing do some on the floor refer to the place as “Titanic 2”!
Perhaps it’s me. Perhaps I am the one with the bad attitude, the one who needs to look at himself and find a little more integrity, a more open minded disposition, adopt a more corporate attitude. Be more of a team player. Alas, if that be the case then I am a lost cause because none of it will be forthcoming from this player in the tawdry game in which I contend that runs for eight hours, five days a week.
The company wants to make it’s staff more efficient, more accountable, to get more out of it’s workforce for less. There is nothing wrong with that. It is a competitive world and those who don’t adapt go the way of others who failed to see which way the wind was blowing.
But they don’t understand that a repetitive, boring job encourages lethargy and good leadership is required to keep the place running in a manner which they would prefer. It just doesn’t happen. Provide the leadership and the proletariat will follow.
I said to someone yesterday that the company would be better off starting from scratch. I said that he, myself and the rest of us have been there too long. We can’t adapt to the new mentality flowing through. We are dead wood. The company is better off cutting it’s losses and paying us out. Start out anew. If they want to run the place like a concentration camp it won’t matter. The old hands who would oppose their behaviour would be gone. But nothing as congenial as that is likely to happen.
So as I head off into my holidays, my morale is a little tattered and I look forward and hope there are better days ahead at work but I get the feeling that I my be stuck on a rudderless boat being pitched and tossed in the rough ocean without recourse which would enable me to return to more navigable channels.
Of course I have spun my own web, dug my own hole, charted my own destiny, I have no remedy for my malady.
What else is there to do? I see public servants heading to work everyday, cogs in the cluster of government, an essential tool to keep society running yet there is no happiness in their demeanour, they are just as blaise and disinterested in their jobs as I am as are others in professions which require work to be done for others. Perhaps there are more people out there who enjoy what they do than there appears to be but we are all just specks in the Cosmos being drawn along by forces which we can’t control. How powerless we are.
I like to write. I like to squirrel myself away and ramble on and I know a few of you come with me on this road through my soul and I appreciate it. It is my creative outlet, a salve to the boredom I suffer in my working life. When I have been long gone it will still be here. A monument to my little life on this earth. I am happy with that.
And so this post has ended up being something different to what I had intended. I had meant to give a rundown on my year as it unfolded but has ended up a diatribe against corporate fascism and and seems to have wandered from there into the ethereal, like a laser through my head and into my brain. So be it.
I am looking forward to 2013 although I realise I am getting older and past the age where I can make a difference in the world. I know time is slipping as I am now far older than the cricketers I watch on television; I remember watching the game and the players were much older than me, like gods or heroes from the romantic past. Now they appear to me as kids, just beginning on their own road to glory. I know they enjoy their profession. Good luck to them!
I hope to find something from this life in the next twelve months which will inspire me to greater deeds. I intend to go to Europe sometime later in the year. Life is short and unpredictable and the thought of never returning to England, never seeing Paris or Rome, never visiting my great uncle’s resting place on the old western front is too much for me to contemplate. I intend to live a few dreams.
So if this is indeed my last post for the year I wish you all well and encourage you to reach a bit further in life, to strain for what you want, take a risk or two, do things you wouldn’t normally do. Make a life and memories to look back on. Most of all, have fun.
See you in 2013!
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 