#oneaday, Day 183: The Waiting Game

After something bad happens, it takes time for things to fall into place. While you're thinking about the bad thing that happened, it seems like an eternity before anything will fall into place and make things seem the slightest bit good again. But then things do start falling into place. And the problem then is that they don't do it fast enough. You can see your final destination, but you're not getting there quick enough. There's a big chasm made of time in the way.

Whoo, deep, huh?

Take now. I've pretty much almost totally nearly in a way kind of 95.7% decided what my next step is going to be. I know I said I'd do it by Day 200. But why wait?

Answer: because I have to. In order to take said next step that I'm 95.7% pretty much almost totally nearly in a way kind of decided about, I have to wait. Specifically, until next week. Next Wednesday is one of those Important Days that will determine what happens next. I'm not going to say anything about it for fear of jinxing it or anything. But let's just say that the outcome of that day should hopefully determine my immediate future at the very least. Which is good. Knowing one's immediate future is good. Knowing one's immediate future is a positive thing is even better, and a positive outcome on this particular day in question will ensure a positive immediate future. I can't speak for the long term, but right now, immediacy is what it's all about. Hah. "Right now, immediacy is what it's all about". Clever.

So I must wait. It's like I've got the Mac OS X pinwheel or the Windows hourglass/swirly Windows 7 thing in front of my life saying "WAIT! STOP! THINK! NO! DON'T THINK! I KNOW YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING BUT I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU WAIT ARBITRARILY!". And there's no way to Ctrl-Alt-Del/Alt-Cmd-Esc out of this waiting period. And turning off isn't an option. I… wait, where was I going with this?

Oh right, waiting. Yes, it sucks. And we're taught that from an early age. Birthdays. Christmas. Easter. "It'll come quicker if you go to bed". No it won't. Unless I sleep until next Wednesday? That's a distinct possibility, though ultimately unproductive and probably bad for… well, everything. Later in life we wait for a response from job applications (which rarely comes), feedback from interviews (I was supposed to have a response from the interview I went to on Friday today, for example, and haven't) and to receive a text back from someone we fancy or to get a scary official letter or to find out if we can buy a house or if our finance has been accepted or… you see where this is all going.

An estimated 85% of our lives (I may have made that up. Which, technically, counts as an estimate.) is spent waiting. Wouldn't it be great if we could just say "I've decided this! What do you think?" and someone could say "Yes!" or "No!" and then we could get on with something else. I'm pretty sure everyone would get a whole lot more done that way.

But no. Instead we sit here clockwatching.

Tick.

Boom.

#oneaday, Day 180: Exhausted

This is going to be a brief one, and for that I apologise. It's been a very, very, very long day.

Had my interview today. Journey to Newbury was absolutely fine with no hiccups. The interview went well, the people were very pleasant and they very much enjoyed my presentation which featured a selection of stick-Pete pictures to liven up the slides, one of which you can see in the corner. I'm still not convinced about the job itself, though I felt quite positive about the interview.

The thing that switches me off a bit is that it would involve relocating and a lot of travel. Right now, I really don't have the finances to be able to fund that sort of thing. It suggests to me that it is something I could maybe do in the future, but it's not the right time to do it now. In the meantime, I have another job interview the Wednesday after next that will allow me to move back home for a bit, raise a bit of money and get myself sorted in preparation for whatever awesomeness is hopefully around the corner.

So that's almost kind of sort of decided, then. As much as it pains me to leave Southampton, the overwhelming response from a lot of people to my question the other day was that making a new start is easier if you make a physical move as well. And okay, going back home isn't exactly a completely fresh start. But it's something to build on, and it's a change. And change is good, apparently.

What wasn't so good today was the journey back. As I left the building where the interview was taking place, it started to rain. That stupid kind of rain where it's still sunny but you get soaked at the same time. Then it stopped. Then it started again.

I hid in the forecourt of a BP garage until it passed and looked at Google Maps to find my way back to the train station. Turned out the train station was actually very close to where I was, but on the other side of some kind of waterway. And it didn't look like there were any ways across.

Fortunately, there was a footbridge that wasn't marked on the map. Said waterway turned out to be a canal, which meant there was a pathway all along the side of it… and no way to get out to the station which was tantalisingly out of reach. I ended up walking about a mile to reach somewhere that was probably less than 200 yards away. Oh well.

Then I got the train back. The journey involved a change of trains at Reading. Changing trains is always stressful because there's always that worry that you'll miss your connection. In this case, it turned out to be true, but it wasn't my fault. The timetables on the station at Reading bore absolutely no resemblance to the trains that were actually coming and going. I ended up stuck in Reading station for nearly two hours, lack of sleep rapidly catching up with me until I did doze off on a bench like a well-dressed vagrant only to be shaken awake by another besuited man asking me if I needed to get on the Oxford train that was about to leave.

"No," I said groggily. "Thank you." Then I closed my eyes again.

When the train I did need eventually arrived, I decided to get into the "quiet" carriage where theoretically mobile phones and stereos are banned. However, what was not banned was the screechy Brummie hen party in there who were flirting noisily with all and sundry and getting incredibly drunk. I just wanted to sleep. Noisy, screechy drunk women are bad enough. Throw in a Brummie accent and… well, you can imagine.

When I did eventually get back to Southampton I was in full-on zombie mode. I shambled my way back to my flat, collapsed into bed for an hour or two and then set about the day's business of writing.

And now here I am. At 3.30am. Tired. But it's Saturday tomorrow. And I intend on sleeping until lunchtime. So there.

#oneaday, Day 75: Late again

One of these days I'll post one of these entries before midnight. If you look at the dates, it looks like I'm a day behind. But I'm not. Oh no. I just stay up late. Which is perhaps not wise. But hey. It's too late now.

I wrote 650 words of story today. They're probably crap, but I made an effort to just churn them out regardless. I'll try and do at least 500 every day, preferably 1000. I can easily get through that. It's just a case of letting the creativity flow and not worrying about it being stupid. That's what the editing process is for.

Little else of note has happened today, really. I went out for a walk and took Gowalla with me. For the uninitiated, Gowalla is a location-based app for the iPhone where you "check in" at places to stamp a virtual passport. You can create your own spots too, meaning that eventually, a user-generated map of points of interest in an area is built up. There's a sort-of game mechanic in there too, with items appearing in places and allowing you to either collect them or drop them elsewhere for others to find.

I'm now up to a hundred stamps. That's cool, although I did create a whole bunch of them myself. Southampton was a little dry on "points of interest" when Gowalla first launched. Now, thanks to the machinations of myself and several others in the area, there's now lots to see. Interestingly, I've got to know a couple of people (not face to face… yet) simply through playing with Gowalla, which is nice. There is talk of a "tweetup" at some point in early April so if I'm feeling super-brave I may go and check it out. We shall see.

Elsewhere today, I rediscovered LittleBigPlanet, which is still one of the best-looking games on PS3. There's some incredibly creative levels out there, too – but you knew that already. Tonight, I played through a selection of excellently designed levels by a guy whose name escapes me right now, as well as a perfect recreation of the first bit of Bioshock, albeit with some rather poor writing spelling, punctuation and grammar-wise. My mind draws a blank any time I fire up the level designer for LittleBigPlanet and I am yet to create a level. I'm sure I'll think of something eventually, though.

Tomorrow, I have a music pupil in the morning and then the remainder of the day… who knows. Since coming back from PAX East, it's been an odd feeling to be "free", though of course the money thing is something of a worry. I have let various agencies know I'm available for work, however, and of course, if you know anyone who is interested in either music or computer tuition in the Southampton area, I invite you to direct them here for music lessons or here for computer lessons. That would be marvellous, 'cause if I get enough pupils between those two things, I won't have to set foot in a classroom, even as a supply teacher, ever again. But that won't work just yet, unfortunately. That's the plan, though.

Right. I'm off, because it's nearly 2am. Good night!

#oneaday, Day 72: Taking Stock

Okay, so I'm back in the UK. Now what? I kind of haven't come down off the high from the last few days yet, but I probably should start making some sort of plan to sort out that "future" thing. I hear it helps.

So here's where I am now. I am going to run down these things in writing in public to see if that helps to take stock of my current situation and give me an idea of where the hell I'm going.

CURRENT EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Writing for Kombo.com. Writing for dailyjoypad.co.uk. Two music pupils, possible third.

EMPLOYMENT ANALYSIS: Not enough to pay rent. Need either a) more pupils b) more writing jobs that pay big bucks (hah!) c) computer pupils as well as music pupils or d) few days of supply teaching per week. I'd rather not have to do d) but it may be a necessity, for a little while at least. Over the next couple of days I am going to set up a new website advertising my computer tuition services and I shall be counting on you (yes, you!) to be part of the pimping process for that. My pupils have found me through the directory on musicteachers.co.uk thus far, but I'm not sure if there's an equivalent for computer tuition. I guess some research is in order.

CURRENT HEALTH STATUS: Mild sore throat. Unfit. Fat.

HEALTH ANALYSIS: Recommence Operation Gym and Operation Run Without Dying. iPhone is already loaded with an appropriate soundtrack, featuring tunes from Bayonetta, Persona 3, Persona 4, OutRun, Space Channel 5, Trauma Center and various Final Fantasy titles. Get into routine of actually going to gym as opposed to routine of not going to gym.

CURRENT SELF-ESTEEM STATUS: Actually not bad right now. Several days with "my people" has helped with this, specifically with the whole "Hey, you're not such a freak after all – and even if you are, there are at least 59,999 people just like you in the world, probably more" thing.

SELF-ESTEEM ANALYSIS: Maintain by doing stuff that makes me feel positive. Avoid doing things that make me feel negative. See aforementioned gym routine thing.

CURRENT MISSION OBJECTIVES:

Make enough money to pay rent (OPTIONAL: Make enough money to pay rent AND have Fun Stuff)
Recruit more music pupils
Design computer tuition website
Recruit computer tuition pupils
Do more writing for Kombo, DailyJoypad and BitMob
Hassle other sites for writing gigs
Attempt to make use of contacts made at PAX
Get into a situation where I can keep the necessity of doing supply teaching to a minimum

First one and the last one are the biggies, I guess. Everything else will contribute to those two. If I can get to a stage where I never have to step inside a classroom again, and I am working entirely on my own terms and feeling good about myself, that's the goal. That's the dream. And it's frickin' well going to happen.

Also, I've totally managed 72 days of blogging without a gap. That's pretty good going, right? I'll have a party on post 100 or something.

#oneaday Day 61: Call me Gordon

I'm a free man! Yes, my contract finished today so as of right this moment I am unemployed. At least as far as that pesky full-time work goes. I'll tell you one thing I won't miss, and that's the 40-mile commute with the immensely predictable traffic around Winchester. I don't know what it is about that place, but the M3 slows to a crawl and all of the roads in and out of the city also slow to a crawl, so it's impossible to win whichever way you choose to go. I let fly with quite a few obscenities on the way home tonight as all I wanted to do was get home.

I'm not going to be sitting on my ass doing nothing, though. I have plenty of things lined up. I have some music pupils starting this week (and, of course, if you know anyone in the Southampton area who is looking for a music teacher, kindly point them in the direction of http://www.pjedmusic.co.uk) and I am shortly to put up a site advertising IT tuition services. Then I'll be doing some writing, too, for a couple of different sites: Kombo.com and DailyJoypad.co.uk, both of which are going to be a great way to get some exposure for my writing, along with the stuff I've done for Good Old Games and WhatTheyPlay in the past.

Right now, it's late, there are drunken morons shouting incoherently outside my window and I've just finished recording an episode of the Exploding Barrel Podcast with the ever-awesome Minotti brothers. Just looked out of the window and the noise was being made by two… I hesitate to call them "men" because they were acting like the kids I've been teaching. Two of them. It sounded like a bloody football crowd. And this after Southampton was (apparently) voted "most welcoming and friendly city in the UK". (I call bullshit on that, by the way, in case you hadn't guessed).

Tomorrow is the first day of a new beginning, or something. I'm meeting one of my (potential) new pupils, I'm getting some stuff sorted ready to do my website writing and I'll have the chance to kick back and actually relax a bit for what feels like the first time in months. It's like a big weight has gone from my shoulders.

I feel bad for my colleagues I left behind as they are without exception awesome people that I will miss a great deal, and they're in a tough situation that is going to be hard work to get through. What I won't miss, however, is the stress of that job, the (8-year old) kids who climb walls and get brought in by the police, the reams and reams of ultimately fairly meaningless paperwork, the finger-wagging "official" people telling us that we don't know what we're doing and… well, you get the idea. Here's to a more positive future, but I will spare a thought for those great people I worked with regularly.

I'm just rambling now, clearly. I think it's time to go to bed. Up and at 'em tomorrow morning… and PAX is creeping ever closer. I can't wait.

One A Day, Day 40: Caught Up

There you go, told you I'd catch up.

On the way home today, filled with stress at our impending school inspection (which has been confirmed for next Tuesday… a genuine case of See You Next… you know.) I got to thinking. Dangerous pastime, I know. I was thinking about what I'm going to do next once this job's over and done with. Given that I haven't got myself a new position yet, I was thinking about alternatives.

My music teaching site, which I set up some time ago, has brought in a slow but steady trickle of enquiries for people looking for tuition. I haven't been able to take any of these people on due to the stupidly long (and traffic-heavy) commute I have to do on a daily basis, but once I don't have to do that, there's definitely the possibility of being able to get a bunch of pupils for some regular income each week.

Then, on the side, I'd like to do some more freelance writing. I gave some editors a poke a while back, and will be poking them again shortly to try and get some work. Once that "starts" and I prove myself some more, that can be a semi-regular income stream, too.

Then, on the other side, I was thinking about setting up a site for computer tuition, too. I'm sure there's a market for it – particularly if I'd be willing to do home visits. There are all sorts of people around at varying degrees of ability with their computer – my time with Apple showed me as much – so I wonder how many of them would be willing to pay for personalised, one-on-one tuition in their home.

Between these things, I'm wondering if that will bring together enough scratch to survive each month. I guess the only question is 1) how long it will take to get enough music and/or computer pupils to make it worthwhile and 2) whether these will all be "regular" income. Freelance writing is, certainly to begin with anyway, not known for its reliability as an income stream – at least until you get "noticed" a bit more – but it is something I love doing. And I'd enjoy the other things.

The biggest perk of doing this would be not having to answer to anyone. All my past jobs have ended up with me getting pissed off with some aspect of the incompetency of the people who are supposed to be "managing" me. (To be fair, I've had rotten luck with regard to management.) Doing this sort of thing would mean I'd only be responsible for myself which is, I won't lie, an appealing option.

It's a scary prospect, though. Ditching the idea of "structured" employment and taking control is both appealing and terrifying. I definitely want to give it some thought, though, and if ever there was a time to save in a new slot, this would be it.

One A Day, Day 35: Eve of the War

Don't know what happened with yesterday's post – I definitely wrote the whole thing, but for some inexplicable reason, half of it disappeared. Oh well. Can't go back now.

Well, here it is – the end of my week-long vacation, which has gone by far too quickly for my liking. I feel suitably rested – or I did, at least. Right now? I don't feel very good about tomorrow. I have a 40 mile drive followed by 8 hours of being somewhere I don't want to be with people I don't want to be with, followed by another 40 mile drive back. But at least there are only four weeks to go. Four weeks! I can manage that, right? Of course I can.

It's the other obstacles that are in my way that are stressing me out more, to be honest. The daily grind I can just about deal with, by simply telling myself "It doesn't matter" (in the style of The Rock) repeatedly, over and over again. The things I'm not looking forward to are the two-day Parents Evening (yes, you read that correctly – a two-day Parents Evening), where I will inevitably be stuck 40 miles from home until late at night; the inevitable re-inspection of the school (which, knowing it doesn't matter, I don't really care about the result of but still don't want to have to put up with the stupidity of); and finding a new job.

I don't have a new job yet. I have applied to several. I haven't heard anything back from any of them yet, but going on past experiences of applying for jobs, HR departments are extremely slow. I haven't given up hope yet, and the Universe may well surprise me by throwing something I actually want to do for a good amount of money my way. Until then, though, the uncertainty is the killer. If I had the security of knowing that I had a new job to go to – to look forward to – after the end of this particular nightmare, I'd feel a lot better about my remaining time.

Still, can't be helped. All I can do is just keep applying for things and eventually someone will appreciate me. Right? Right. Of course.

On a lighter note, we recorded the SquadCast for Machinarium tonight – an adorable little indie point-and-click adventure featuring robots and no language. My current tentative plan is to edit that next weekend, so keep an eye out for that one. Also watch this space for more exciting Squadron of Shame podcast news.

See, I like doing that stuff. The annoying thing is no-one wants to pay me for it!

One A Day, Day 34: Progress Update

Well, I have to say, this is going well so far. Doubly so given that the original proponent of the whole "oneaday" thing has given up. It's fair enough, really – committing yourself to writing something every single day, even if it's complete crap and doesn't mean anything to anyone but yourself can be a bind, but I've made sure (so far) to ensure that I don't get behind – even if that means frantically typing something on my iPhone while lying in bed, or typing something at 3 in the morning while pissed up on gin and tonic.

So the blogging's going well, at least. I'm approaching the end of my week off now, though, and my body is starting to let me know this fact. I hadn't been directly thinking about my return to work, but still I've developed a cough and a horrible nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomac

[The remainder of this post disappeared into WordPress oblivion – only noticed today. Apologies!]

One A Day, Day 15: Blips

Blips today. Nothing that interesting to say, so I'll go with the snippet approach.

Back to work today. Boo. But at least I could get away with making them all do a writing test this morning, so I didn't have to do very much for the first hour or so. Hooray! I also tidied my classroom and filed the bajillion bits of paper that were littering the top of my desk… some (well, most) into the bin and others into actual files with dividers and everything. Suddenly, by doing that, I feel a bit less incompetent. Still doesn't make me want to carry on though – teaching's had its chance.

Took me two hours to get to work this morning. It's usually an hour's drive. The last hour was taken up by the last three miles of the journey. It was one of those annoying traffic jams where it wasn't at all obvious what the problem was – and there probably wasn't anything at the front of it. It had snowed a little bit, but not enough to make the roads perilous, so I'm not sure that could be an excuse. I could be wrong though.

Currently installing Mass Effect 2. I've been replaying the prequel as a Renegade (went as a Paragon on my first playthrough) but overenthusiastic tweets from friends have made me want to jump on board and import my old Paragon character.

Also found one of the best apps out there for iPhone 1st gen/3G owners – iVideoCamera. It's 59p and is a fully-functional video camera with export to camera roll, Twitter, YouTube and Wi-Fi. The quality isn't quite as good as with a proper 3GS, but it's certainly acceptable. You can use it in either 160xsomething mode at full frame rate for unlimited recording, or 320xsomething at 10fps for "high quality" mode. Both look just fine, and are certainly enough to shoot a quick video and post to Twitter or something. So if you still have a 3G like me, then it's a great app. And cheap.

Well, that's about that for today. Sorry I don't have more to say. But the whole thing with "one a day" is that not every day is vastly interesting. Go and look at my photos from yesterday if you haven't already. The low-level pebbly beach shot with the nice depth of field is currently my desktop background.

One A Day, Day 7: Achievement Unlocked!

That's one week of continuous blogging. Achievement unlocked! Okay, some of the entries have been fairly pointless so far, but at least I'm writing something, and there's no better practice at writing than to actually do it.

Just been for a run – my third this week. This means I've successfully completed the first week of the course I linked to yesterday. Achievement unlocked! Here's the route I took today, in case you were curious. Going over the Itchen Bridge meant there were a lot more hills than usual, so my legs feel like they've had a decent workout today.

I have a meeting with my boss on Monday to discuss my leaving date! Achievement unlocked! Possibly!

Enough of that. Achievement un… Stop it. Seriously.

Today's been another quiet, dull day. Played a bit more of the Star Trek Online beta earlier and tried out a character on the Klingon side. It seems that Klingon players mainly play PvP missions – or perhaps that's just what's in the Klingon sectors. I wonder what happens if you go further afield?

On the writing front, it's been great to see members of the Squadron of Shame getting well into contributing to BitMob, one of the best community-driven games sites out there, with lots of "alumni" from the 1up blogosphere (ugh… hate that word) finding a new home there. I'll definitely be contributing more as time goes on – if nothing else, it's good practice for thinking up interesting ideas for articles which I could pitch to potential freelance clients. If you haven't checked out my articles there yet, go do so! (The Bayonetta article is by far the most popular. I'm not sure what that says to me.)

That's about all I have to say today, apart from the usual "I really don't want to go back to work on Monday". But let's try and be positive. There's still some of Sunday night left. Dinner, avoiding seeing Dancing on Ice and probably Star Trek Online await.