Motivation

When I started working, long ago in 1998 at Internet Vision, motivation wasn't a problem: work was something I did to cheer myself up. This held when I moved over to Frontwire; but when the company abandoned its offices, sacked all of my department apart from me, and I had to work from home back in 2002 or 2003 or so (IIRC), I started to find it hard to get up and start working in the mornings; I realised that working on problems with other people was more of a motivation for me than the fear of being reprimanded for not getting enough work done!

Well, I left that company before long, and freelanced for a while, then got together with some others and formed a company, GenieDB. I can now combine the best of both worlds; I can work from home, in my own environment, while being in contact with my colleagues in our company IRC channel, and working together on problems. I find it hardest when we're all working on unrelated projects, so there's little daily sharing of issues and triumphs, but the level of de-motivation I feel then is small fry compared to how it was when I worked alone!

Nonetheless, since my Frontwire days, various other stresses have appeared in my life, so my base level of motivation is nowhere near what it once was. Carefully managing my morale in order to keep my head above water is an important concern.

Luckily, I made a breakthrough some months ago; for some reason or other I had to be up much earlier than usual, so was up at 8am one day. When I had dealt with the business that required the early morning, it was about 9am, and I didn't need to start work until 10am - so I used the extra hour to go and tinker with stuff in my workshop. It was good. Having had an early morning I was tired that night and fell asleep easily, and having had an hour of "me time", I didn't have my usual restless urge to go and do something fun rather than going to bed.

And I forgot to turn the alarm clock back to its usual time. So the next morning I awoke again at 8am. Except this time, having been to sleep earlier, I wasn't dog tired. So I got up and enjoyed two hours of me-time before starting work.

I was hooked.

Previously, I would wake up knowing I had to get out of bed, get Jean ready for preschool, deliver her there, then start working, spend my lunch break mowing the lawn or other domestic tasks, eat at my desk, work until it was time to go and collect Jean, bring her back, cook dinner, take Jean to bed, then try and catch up on domestic matters (while tired) before going to bed and having trouble sleeping. This not being a particularly delightful prospect, I would often lie in bed far too long, cherishing the ability to just lie there and think, knowing that getting up meant stepping onto a virtual treadmill.

But now I was waking up at eight in the morning, and positively leaping out of bed at the thought of going and doing something fun. I made a rule that, from 8am to 10am, I'd do whatever I wanted; I wouldn't accept requests. I'd get to my desk at 10am, lively and happy. I'd be more tired in the evenings (that extra two hours didn't come out of nowhere), but much less depressed, so I'd get the domestic stuff done sooner and end up spending more time with Sarah once Jean was in bed, then be off to bed in good time as I was getting tired.

My two hours in the morning even gave me time to do things like having showers, which I had previously had to try and fit elsewhere in the day, often ending up going several days overdue!

Even when I'm in London, I woke up at 8am and spent two hours pottering about on my laptop, or going for a walk.

Now that Jean's started school, it's not quite so good - I have to be up at 7:30am to start helping Sarah to get her up, and fed, and dressed, and leave the house at 8:15am to get Jean to the school for 8:45am, but then I'm back home at 9am for an hour of my own before starting work at 10am; I still find it hard to get out of bed knowing I have to do the school run before I can do fun things, and I don't fancy getting out of bed at 6:30am for an hour to myself before doing that When Sarah's healthier she might be able to cope with the school run on her own, though, so it might improve yet; she doesn't seem to benefit from starting the day with her own time as much as I do, so that might be a fair trade.

We'll see!

Lovely Date 03/06/09

Need I say more?

Walks off humming happily.

First Class

Once a week, I go to London for a few days, almost always by train. It costs £42 if I buy a ticket from the station on the day - or, if I book in advance at TheTrainLine, as little as £16. Tickets ordered in advance are cheaper, but it seems there is a limited allocation of each price grade - as the more popular routes quickly sell out of £8 each way tickets, then the next level up (£11.50), then the next level up (£18).

However, when I booked the tickets for last week, for the return journey on Saturday, only the £18 ones remained - but, unusually, there were still some £19.50 first class tickets left.

I'd never travelled first class before. So, I decided I'd give it a try. £1.50 isn't much to spend on an experiment.

And my conclusion is: first class equals a comfier seat and the offer of a free biscuit and tea or coffee.

Which, if I drank hot drinks, would definitely be worth the extra one fifty, at the going rate for such things.

As a non-hot-drinker, I think I about broke even with my experiment, but on a journey of more than an hour, the better seat would be well worth a similarly small price increase.

But travelling first class is nowhere near worth the more than doubling in price (£116 rather than £42) it costs if you buy your ticket on the day. That's a total ripoff.

Race For Life

As many of you know there is an event called Race For Life which is designed to raise money to 'beat' cancer and our friend is going to be running and is looking for sponsorship!

You can sponsor her here.

It's quiet a run anyway - the sort of length you really need to train for plus she is offering to crochet thankyous for people which is an excellent idea!

Cancer touches so many of our lives and in developed countries is a big killer - my first contact with cancer was my granddad who had asbestocise which led to mesophilioma (have no idea how to spell either of those but basically the fibroids fromthe asbestosis cuased cancer), he died shortly after I returned from Kenya and in fact my perants weren't even there to pick me up as they were at the hospice.

By this point my friend Amber was also sick with luekemia a cancer of the blood. She went in and out of remission and had various things happen to her like a stroke due to the treatments and stuff - she dies whilst I was in Kin Lochleven in Scoutland during a field trip. I missed her funeral for which I am still sad - she actually died of pnumonia and was in remission but was just too weak from all the treatments.

Her illness was found as she came with me to give blood on my 18th birthday and she phoned me on my 21st though was too tired to come to the party - a year younger than me she died not long before her own 21st birthday - she was one of the nicest and most intelligent people I knew and asked me about Imperial lots.

More recently there is mum's breast cancer so obviously I feel very strongly about events like this - hence the hair dyeing and things in the autum.

So please if you can sponsor

And I hope this wasn't too morbid.

Of Games and Geeks

Last weekend my friends Ella and Oliver came up - first they stayed at Andrews place in Cheltenham were I joined them on Sunday. We eat the most fantastic meal that Andrew had prepared and organised with a walnut suace and pasta - mmmmmmm.

We did lots of chatting and catching up and they tried to get me to play a computer game with them and I explained that I get to addicted to things like that so best not plus there's the RSI issue and I don't want to take up my avaliable computer time on games - I would love to play games don't me wronge but I have made the sensible if boring decission on this one.

I then insulted Ella by given her a Christopher Pike book about Vampires that I thought might inspire/help her with her huge literary endevour.

I said I was happy to play a board game or something though so we played a game called munchkin (I think) the rules of which were a bit of mystery to me and hence I lost - though I did get to be an elf with a very long sword and have a chicken on my head (though apparently the chicken thing was a curse adn bad). The aim seemed to be to work as a team and stab your partners in the back.

Anyway I had a fun time loosing.

Then Monday we went out around Cheltenham and I scoured the charity shops for the next books in series's I need - in the end I found one of them in a discount book shop and so actaully bought a new copy! (I'm addicted to the Lemony Snicket series).

That night Andrew came around to our place and we played Lord of the Rings Monopoly which David got me and Al. I as always was legolas I didn't win. Poor Al didn't get to join in as he had to work - Jean didn't want to stay with us and went and played in her room and then went to bed early - wow?!

Oliver spent an age going though the shoes box of magic the gathering cards I have (I don't know what to do with them but he sorted it out and handed me a starter game pack thing that was in their). The shoe box belonged to Al's Step brother Simon who decided he didn't want it anymore.

Al took Andrew home and me, Ella and Oliver played one of my oldest board games - Elixir though there was a bit of an issue over having not explained the rules to Ella.

Unsuprisingly I won this one.

Al had taken Andrew back at like 11:30 or something like that - Oliver was gearing up for another game as he eyed the Dangons and Dragons games. This was vetoed and instead we looked at the board for Anticipation - my second oldest board game that doesn't actually belong to me - it was our 'family' game when I was growing up and me and David played it for hours and hours.

Tuesday Al actually came for lunch with us and we wandered down to the Black Horse (the village pub known for excillent food). This pub is normally packed out - but it was empty - so empty I thought we'd wandered into a closed pub - but no apparently the pensioners who are all normally in there don't have any money as it all came from their investiments so the main clientelle untill the tourist season starts is gone

He was very sad about this The food is still excillent though with silly big portions - Ella told me off for eating my cheese and chutney wrong :/

In the afternoon me and Ella went for a walk and got lost and midge bitten which was fun, we discuessed our futures in science and litrature and the nature of society and that sort of girly stuff

As always I felt sad when they had gone as I really miss geek talk. Andrew is also moving to Ammerica at the end of April as well