1750: Time Kompression

Once again, time has been proving itself to be somewhat fluid. I’ve only had a week off from work, but it feels like an eternity; it probably helps that I’ve done one hell of a lot of things in said week off — most notably going back and forth to Scotland, but also last night’s trip to London for Distant Worlds as well as a few other things — but this would seem to disprove the whole “time flies when you’re having fun” theory; I’ve certainly been having plenty of fun, but this week feels like it’s been an extremely long one.

I’m not complaining; it’s been nice to have what actually feels like a really long holiday when, in fact, I’ve only been away for a week. I feel quite rested and relaxed and, necessity of waking up at an ungodly hour for a commute that doesn’t suck all of the balls aside, pretty much ready to face the day tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll be back into the same old routine before long, but that’s not really a bad thing; routines are comfortable and familiar, and form the backbone to one’s existence. Routines mean that breaks like I’ve had this week feel all the more meaningful and enjoyable; times like this week are honest-to-goodness breaks when I don’t have to worry about anything and can just enjoy some legitimately completely free time.

This is something I never really got when I was working from home. Although most of the publications I worked for were perfectly happy for me to take a few days off here and there, it was sort of hard to justify doing so when I have a laptop and could work from literally anywhere there was an Internet connection. Indeed, on a number of occasions I found myself working hard well into the night when I should really have been relaxing and enjoying myself doing other things, but I was always keen to make a decent impression with the effort I made — that and, in the case of things I wrote regularly, such as my Japanese gaming column on USgamer, I didn’t want to let down my audience.

This is something I never really got when I was a teacher, either: you can’t just take a day (or week, or month) off here and there when you’re working as a teacher; you have to go by the holiday calendar the school follows. This makes things both restrictive and prohibitively expensive; school holidays are “primetime” season for travelling, tourist attractions and, indeed, pretty much everything, so the prices are jacked up accordingly. Not only that, it means that there’s just no letting up, even when you need a break for the sake of your health — mental, physical or both. Couple that with the guilt trip you get when you take a day off genuinely sick — you’re expected to provide a full day’s worth of lesson plans for cover teachers to use even if you’re on your deathbed — and the whole situation is just rather shitty all round.

So now I am pleased to enjoy my times of holiday, because they’re just that — time off. Nothing to worry about. No work I “should” be doing while I’m away; no “I’ll just check in on the office email”; no “I’ll just pen a quick article on that” — just rest and relaxation. Bliss.

1734: Working Week

I am glad to reach the end of this week — it’s been a long one, largely because of that overnighter I had to pull in the middle; an inconvenience which even having the whole day off yesterday hasn’t quite allowed me to recover completely from. I’m not as young as I once was, I guess.

While I shan’t talk about the job itself — it is generally inadvisable to talk too much about one’s current employer if one wishes to stay employed — I did want to just contemplate how this new chapter in my life is going so far. After all, there’s a significant number of changes here, and while many of my friends and peers have been living this sort of existence for years now — in many cases since the end of university — being in the position of having a “normal” job is still something that is relatively new to me.

I’m enjoying the experience, though. Sure, there are quiet and boring moments, but there’s also a feeling that I’m doing something vaguely useful, and more than that, it’s nice to be around actual real people, even if they’re all busy doing their own things for most of the day.

That, I think, is the thing I missed the most. As something of a self-professed recluse at the best of times, a year or two back I never would have thought that I’d be craving human contact, but towards the end of my time working from home, I was really starting to go just that little bit crazy without having other people around. Sure, I could walk to the shop, but interactions there are fleeting at best, and those who try to strike up conversations with strangers in convenience stores are generally regarded as being somewhat on the fringes of polite society. (Not that my own social anxiety would ever permit me to strike up a conversation with a stranger in a convenience store, anyway; the thought of it is mortifying.)

At work, though, it’s been a pleasure to slot in as part of an existing team. It feels like some people are still coming to realise that I exist, while others have accepted me immediately. I’m particularly grateful for the fact that my immediate team of peers are all extremely nice people that I enjoy spending time with; while our job certainly isn’t miserable or horrendously difficult or anything like that, we form the sort of group that can share both positive and negative experiences together and feel like we have a “bond” of sorts; a sense of camaraderie.

This is, as previously noted, somewhat different to anything I’ve experienced before. In teaching, things varied from being cliquey to “us vs. them”; in retail, there was a sharp divide between the floor staff and management; in the online press, I rarely saw the people I worked with face to face. Here, I see the people I work with — at least those on my immediate team, anyway — every day, and as part of a large company we’re just one part of a whole. It’s an interesting experience, and one that I’m gradually getting used to as the weeks tick by.

I’m pretty sure that I made the right choice to get here. In some respects I’m wishing I’d made it a little sooner.

1711: Soporific

I have… a problem.

Said problem is that if I have to sit still and do nothing while concentrating on someone else talking for any length of time, I get extremely sleepy, regardless of how tired I actually am. My eyelids start to get heavy, my body gets tired and all I want to do is just curl up and get comfortable for a bit of a nap.

This is a problem because the times when I am supposed to sit still, do nothing and concentrate on someone else talking for any length of time are generally occasions where it would be impolite to fall asleep. Weddings and funerals, for example, but also meetings.

I’ve suffered with this issue for as long as I can remember — certainly for as long as I’ve been an adult. I remember it happening on occasion at university during lectures, but more often than not this could be attributed to a heavy night out the previous evening and a hangover weighing on my mind. (My peers found it terribly amusing when I had to quietly slip out of our weekly piano workshop to go and be a bit sick. Well, I didn’t want to throw up all over the Turner Sims concert hall.) At other times, I could fend it off by occupying my brain somewhat: either taking notes if I was actually interested in the subject of the lecture, or doodling the lecturer getting sucked off by some sort of sinister vacuum cleaner-like contraption if I wasn’t. (This happened once; it wasn’t something I found myself drawing on a regular basis.)

It’s mildly embarrassing, but fortunately I’ve never managed to actually completely fall asleep before. I’ve come perilously close, I must admit, but I always manage to maintain my faculties and remain in the land of the living. I came perilously close on more than one teacher training day while I worked in schools, too, particularly since said training days tend to ignore everything we’re ever taught about engaging people and helping them learn and instead tend to consist of someone waffling on and on and on for hours about something which is, quite possibly, a load of old bollocks.

The peculiar thing is the moment I step out of the situation where I’m supposed to be concentrating on someone else droning on about whatever, I can be back to full alertness in a matter of seconds, with no trace of tiredness. It’s just that while I’m sitting there, expected to take in everything that is being said and actually retaining very little of it at all — usually because it’s not relevant to me and thus immediately filtered out by my brain — my body appears to go into its shutdown sequence. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Or am I? That would be awful, and even more difficult to explain than falling asleep in a meeting already would be. But I guess we’ll cross that bridge if — yes, if — we come to it!

1701: The Lunchbox

I don’t miss many things about going to school, either as a pupil or as a teacher, but one thing I do sort of miss about the former aspect is having a packed lunch.

There was always an air of mystery about a packed lunch that someone else had prepared, particularly in primary school, where it tended to be safely stored in a vibrant, colourful plastic lunchbox well away from one’s desk, with its contents not to be revealed until, well, lunchtime. And then it was always a tense moment as sandwiches were unwrapped and fillings surveyed. Would it be cheese and brown sauce? (My “compromise cheese and pickle”; I don’t like Branston Pickle) Would it be ham? Would it be Bovril? Or would it be something surprising and exotic like… err, egg and salad cream?

Then there was the remaining content to go through. What would accompany the sandwich? Would it be a packet of crisps that I liked, or something “boring” like ready salted? (I remember vividly getting into a rage and crushing a packet of ready salted crisps when I was about 8 years old; I was quite an angry child, for reasons that were at least semi-justifiable — though the crisps didn’t really deserve to receive the brunt of my ire.) Would there be a chocolate biscuit like a Penguin, or something else? Would there be some form of fruit? What would the drink be? (I doubt many of the lunchboxes of my youth would have passed the stringent inspections that some schools apparently now insist upon, incidentally.)

It was all oddly exciting in the most boring way possible, and I’ve been gratified to rediscover this dubious joy now that I’m going out to work every day — although sadly without a gaudy plastic lunchbox containing a Thermos full of squash. On days where I remember to pack a lunch, obviously I know what I’ve put in there, but there’s still that joy of being able to finally devour the things that have been waiting in your drawer all morning; on days where Andie is good enough to prepare a lunch for me (and herself as well, I might add) there’s that element of mystery back again… what might be in the sandwiches today? Which one of the biscuit bars is in there? What kind of drink might be waiting for me?

You have to take pleasure in the small things in life because the big, exciting things don’t come around that often. (At least, I don’t think they do.) And a fine way to start appreciating those small things is with something as simple as a lunchbox. If you’re the sort of person who habitually wanders out to Tesco of a lunchtime to purchase a cardboardy prepacked sandwich, make yourself a packed lunch one day, and you, too, can discover this dubious joy which I’ve been rediscovering recently.

Or perhaps I’m just a weirdo. That, let’s face it, is a very distinct possibility.

1698: Friday, Friday

I’ve always appreciated the weekend to a certain degree, but frankly when you’re working from home as I was for the last four years, spending a couple of extra days in the place where you’ve been spending time anyway wasn’t much of a “reward” for a job well done. (A couple of days off, however, was.)

After just two weeks at my new job, I’m already observing a new appreciation of the weekend. It was thoroughly pleasant to know that, as time ticked on throughout this afternoon, I was getting closer and closer to being able to go home and stay there for a bit. (Yes, we have a thoroughly quiet and boring weekend planned, with the only thing we really have to leave the house for being my eye test tomorrow.)

I’ve been in a position to appreciate the weekend before, back when I was a teacher, but it wasn’t quite the same. When working as a teacher, you see, the weekends tend to end up filled with the work you weren’t able to complete during the week. Things like marking, levelling, paperwork — and by the time you’re done with all that there’s not all that much time left for enjoying yourself.

Then there was retail, where weekends would frequently be stolen from you — although, I have to say, having a midweek day off in lieu of some weekend work was always rather pleasant.

Now, though, I have a proper weekend. I get home from work on a Friday evening and I don’t have to even think about it until Monday morning. That’s a good feeling. That’s a nice feeling. That means I can enjoy my weekend without guilt about things I “should” be doing, or worrying about whether I’ll have a job when the next week starts. (The latter worry is a common affliction of those in the online press sector, because, well, as I’ve already demonstrated, jobs sometimes just disappear at a moment’s notice.)

So yes. I plan to enjoy my weekend to the fullest. Not like some ‘avin it large “living for the weekend” twat, of course — I actually can’t remember the last time I just “went out” to drink and… do whatever it is you’re supposed to do on a night out — but rather someone who has worked hard all week and is now perfectly entitled to a bit of a break.

I anticipate this weekend will be filled with a combination of Tales of Xillia 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Velocity 2X and possibly a first look at Danganronpa 2 if I finish Xillia 2, which is starting to look increasingly likely. We’ll see. I’m sure I’ll have lots to talk about when I eventually crack that one open.

For now, then, have a pleasant Friday night, and an enjoyable weekend. I certainly will.

1697: Adjustments

I am very tired. This is a side-effect of my new routine, which necessitates getting up at some point before (or, more commonly just before) 7am, going out, doing some work for a normal working day, then coming home in time for about 6pm, eating dinner, then doing something relaxing and pleasant in the evening.

This may not sound all that tiring to those of you who have happily been holding down nine-to-fives for the last umpteen years, but it’s been something of a culture shock to me.

Actually, that might be a slight exaggeration. But after four years of working from home, often in my pants, there have been a number of adjustments I’ve had to make. And, you know, aside from the whole “getting up early” thing (which I still loathe thanks to my body’s uncanny ability to be extremely tired in the morning regardless of whether I go to bed early, timely…ly or ridiculously late) these adjustment haven’t been all that bad — and I think they’ll have a positive effect overall.

The biggest change is, of course, the fact that I am no longer working from home and consequently have to 1) put clothes on and 2) travel to work. The former’s not really an issue — I joke about working in my pants, but in reality more often than not I did get dressed to do work, because it put me in the right mindset to do useful things.

The latter, however, is a noteworthy change. I have a drive of about 45 minutes or so to my place of work, followed by a 10-15 minute walk from where I park my car to the actual office. This means that I’m getting a bit of very light exercise every day, which is probably a good thing. I can’t say it’s particularly strenuous exercise, given that I tend to walk quite slowly — a trait I have apparently inherited from my mother without noticing at some point — but it is exercise of sorts, and it’s every day.

There’s also actually a gym on site at my new workplace, which I will probably join at some point soon, since it’s a lot cheaper than the one I’m currently a member of. (Plus I walk past it on the way out of work every day, so that makes it a lot more difficult to ignore… and it has the advantage of meaning that if I stay late to do even a short workout, I’m less likely to run into rush-hour traffic on the way home, which will be very nice indeed.)

The fact I’m working in an office rather than in my own house, which, to put the following in context, is approximately 5 minutes’ walk from a Tesco Express, means that I’m less inclined to wander out and purchase various snacks and sugary drinks when I’m feeling hungry, too. Instead, I’m drinking a lot more water, I’ve cut down a fair bit on the lattes — no more than one or two a day, usually just the one to pep me up a bit in the morning — and I’ve almost entirely eliminated fizzy pop from consideration when I think about what I’d like to drink. I take my own lunch when either Andie or I remember to prepare it the night before (because let’s face it, neither of us feel inclined to do so at that ungodly hour in the morning) but even when I don’t, the work canteen is pretty good, with a selection of decent food rather than the usual “chips with everything” situation I typically associate with the word “canteen”.

So on the whole, then, things are going well and I hope they will have a positive impact on both my physical and mental wellbeing. It’s too early to say right now, but I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on things as I continue to settle in.

1686: Sunday Night

Back to work tomorrow, and after a rather gentle start last week I’m actually hoping I’ll be able to get stuck in and make myself useful a bit more this week. I have a full-day company induction on Tuesday, I believe, but all being well the remainder of the week will see me actually doing my job, which will be nice.

Yes, that’s right, I said “nice”. I know in modern life it’s fashionable to be cynical about your job and to merely tolerate it rather than enjoy it, but for the moment I’m actually relishing the prospect of having something to do each day — and that something being part of something bigger.

I’ve had this to a lesser extent when working on websites, of course, but when working remotely from a different timezone to the rest of your colleagues, it’s easy to feel somewhat justifiably isolated at times. The advantage of what is effectively working “solo” alongside a bunch of other people who are also working “solo” on the same thing is that you can turn things around pretty quickly — more often than not, I’d have an idea for a feature on a website and be able to research, write and publish it within a space of a day. (Obviously things that require longer to research — by playing a whole game through for a review or walkthrough, for example — take a bit longer, but these can be worked on alongside other things.)

The downside of this I’ve already mentioned: you feel like you’re kind of going it alone, even when the people you work with make an effort to get together online in some form or another and swap ideas.

Conversely, having switched work environments from working solo at home to part of a team in a big office, I’ve noticed two things related to the shift: firstly, things take a whole lot longer than if I was doing everything myself as in the past, and secondly, you’re a lot more reliant on other people.

These things are a mixed blessing at best; it can be frustrating to be waiting on an important piece of information from a specific person and they simply don’t get back to you for weeks at a time. On the other hand, it means that things are — theoretically, anyway — a whole lot less stressful, since the workload of getting something done is spread between several people, each of whom can concentrate on their own specialisms rather than having to dip their toes into unfamiliar waters on occasion. It also kind of means you can work on a lot more things at the same time — do your bit, pass it on to the relevant person or people, then get started on something else, only returning to the original thing if you have to go back and fix something.

None of this is news to any of you who have been happily chugging along in office jobs for years now, I’m sure, but this is still quite a new experience to me. Those who have known me a while will remember that my past lives have included being a teacher, a salesman, a software trainer and a video games journalist — all jobs that tend to involve you dealing with things by yourself, whether or not you’re part of an overall “team”. It’s actually kind of nice to know that now, for the first time, I can share out some of the responsibilities a bit more as well as helping other people out when I can. I foresee it being a much more pleasant way to work — let’s just hope I keep feeling that way after the initial “honeymoon period” is over!

Anyway. In line with my new responsibilities as a cog in the corporate machine, it is time for me to disappear in a bedwards direction. I hope you have a pleasant week.

1684: Honest Living

If you’ve been paying attention and/or know me, you’re probably curious about how my first week at my new job went, right? If not, well, tough, I’m going to tell you anyway.

I’ve enjoyed it for the most part, though there have been frustrating hiccups, chief among which is I’ve spent a significant part of the week unable to actually, you know, do any work due to the fact that my access to the company’s network wasn’t, umm, working.

As of close of business today, my email still wasn’t working, though I at least finally had sufficient access to be able to get a proper taste of what I’ll be doing on a daily basis. Turns out I can do the job I was hired for, which is always good to know.

Over my first couple of days, I had the opportunity to sit down with the members of my immediate team and the related people with whom I’ll most frequently be working. Without exception, they were all really nice folks, and I didn’t get the impression any of them were putting on their “best face” for the new guy; they all seemed to be genuinely nice people.

I haven’t found myself freezing up with social anxiety, either, which is something I was terrified of. Rather, I’ve found myself able to chat with my colleagues — including using their names without feeling weird — and generally relax about interpersonal reactions; no-one seems to think I’m a wanker, at least, which is nice, and my immediate team even seemed to be genuinely interested in actually getting to know me properly, which was nice.

The other interesting thing I found was that pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to over the course of the last few days has been with the company for numerous years, with many having moved around quite a bit during their time there. This suggests two welcome pieces of news to me: firstly, that it’s a good place to work, and secondly that there’s plenty of opportunity for development, advancement and sideways movement. (It may also suggest that people wanted to hold on to a stable job during the economic downturn, but I’m not one to judge; I took this job because I wanted financial stability.)

The lady who serves coffee on our floor is very nice, too. She’s writing a book and a screenplay and decided to tell me all about it while she was brewing my latte this morning. We bonded somewhat; I confessed that I’ve had a book in my head for at least the last ten years or so and still haven’t quite managed to tease it out in a finished form. Maybe one day.

So in summary then, it’s been a good week. Now it’s the weekend, I can simply switch off and forget about work until Monday morning. I won’t lie, it’s a good feeling. Whether or not it will last remains to be seen, but for now I’ll take it.

Living a normal life, eh. Who’d have thought it.

1659: Time Off

There’s still nearly a month before I start my new job. With the job search over, this means that I am now being left largely to my own devices on a daily basis, which sounds like a dream come true, doesn’t it?

It isn’t.

Much like working from home isn’t the wonderfully liberating experience you might think it would be, having a protracted amount of time to yourself with not a lot that you really “need” to do is not everything you might think it is, either. Days are long, boring and filled with vast tracts of nothingness, unless, of course, you find yourself something to occupy them with.

Most days, I’m pretty good at occupying myself. In the simplest cases, I’ll simply play some games, watch some TV or read some stuff. Others, I might go out — maybe into town, or down to the gym, or just for a wander around outside. Others still, I might do things that “need” doing, like mowing the lawn or cleaning or tidying.

But there are days — today was one of them — where nothing feels like it’s quite “right”; nothing feels like it will satisfy you. It’s days like today that often see me sitting on the sofa staring into space for surprisingly lengthy periods of time, caught between desires, wants and needs, and never quite being able to muster up the energy or motivation to pursue any of them. Doing something I know I’ll enjoy feels like a waste of time; doing something “productive” feels like it’s an insurmountable challenge.

All this, of course, is a side-effect of depressive tendencies; it’s not that I actually don’t want to do anything, it’s simply that, for whatever reason, my brain decides that it wants to be sad today, and the jumbled impulses the depressed brain fires out have a tendency to override everything else and prioritise that feeling of sadness. It’s not sadness about anything in particular, it just is; it’s just a frustratingly dark feeling from which it’s difficult to escape, particularly if you’re home alone, like I have been.

It’s for this reason that I’m genuinely looking forward to starting work again — and genuinely looking forward to the fact that, for the first time in four years, I’ll be working in a place where there are actual other living, breathing people with whom I might be able to interact on a daily basis. (Said interactions will, of course, be prone to my other big issue — that of social anxiety — but that’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get to it.) I’m looking forward to having the change of scenery each day — the chance to drive my new car and spend some time listening to the radio, music or podcasts; the opportunity to spend several hours away from the house; the pleasant feeling of “coming home” after a hard day’s work — and of just, you know, doing something.

Tell that to my twentysomething self and he’d probably laugh in your face. But, frankly, life without work is not as fun as you might think it would be. (Well, it probably would be if you had more money than you’d ever know what to do with — though I imagine even that would get boring after a while.) Consequently, I find myself counting down the days until I become just another cog in the great machines of business — and genuinely looking forward to that day, rather than dreading it.

1239: I Think I’m Actually Dying

Hello. It is 1:43 in the morning and I am still at work. I am actually in an office doing work, too — the nature of my new job means that I can actually pop in to the Eurogamer offices in Brighton on occasion and feel like I actually work with other people (when in fact my real colleagues are several thousand miles away, but eh.)

The reason it is 1:43 in the morning and I am still at work is because it is E3. I have been working since 11am yesterday, and I will likely continue working until approximately 4am, at which point I have to drive back to Southampton, which will take nearly two hours. Thankfully, this is the only day that this much crap is going on at E3, so I can live with it for now.

I can also live with it because I’m actually enjoying myself. I can tell I enjoy my job because I think about writing things for it when I’m not “on the clock,” as it were. I want to post things. I want to talk about games. It’s great fun. The other people who work with me on USgamer feel the same way, too, and we’re building a great site through our collective enthusiasm and knowledge.

Speaking of USgamer, the site’s now live after a somewhat hectic day. The sites have been up and down all day for various reasons, but they currently seem somewhat stable. Check it out here. Enjoy! And that’s all I’m going to write for now, because I need to conserve my energy somewhat!