The other day I talked about work here, which is something I never normally do. Something else I don’t normally do is write about anything too personal. I’m not sure why, but I suppose I don’t feel I want to give too much away in such a public space. This may be my self-indulgent little corner of the web, where I like to presume that anyone actually cares about any of this stuff, but I make the rules, and I usually prefer not to reveal anything about myself that you don’t already know.

Today I am going to break both of these self-imposed rules (at least until I reread this at some unspecified date in the future, realise what a load of self-obsessed toss it is, and decide to delete this post).

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about work recently. The last week or so has been pretty awful, and it’s not just the post-festival blues. I am starting to wonder if I made the right decision in moving jobs. When they offered me this job, I couldn’t decide what to do. Of course, I used to moan about Micromuse as much as the next cynical bastard, just as I had complained about RiverSoft before that (usually when the threat of redundancy loomed), but when they offered me this job, I just wasn’t sure what to do. I think the problem was that I was comfortable at Micromuse. I knew the people, I knew the job, and I knew exactly what I’d be doing for the next so many months. However much I might have moaned about it, or about certain colleagues, at least I knew exactly what I needed to do and I totally understood the technology that I needed to write about.

When I finally decided to take the job it was because I thought I was too comfortable there and I wasn’t being challenged enough, but now I wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off staying put. Now I realise that I don’t know anything at all.

Yesterday was just awful. A completely pointless and unproductive day. I had been asked to write this new document, based on an existing document, by extracting the information and reformatting and restructuring it. Despite the poor quality of the original document, I tried to complete this task and sent it back to the guy I was working with, hoping that it satisfied his ideas about what the new document should be, but then he sends it on to his manager, who has a whole set of different ideas about what was needed. Eventually I get this thing sent back to me with 68 different comments on it (and it’s only a 35 page document), all of which involve further restructuring, and most of which seem to contradict each other (i.e., the first comment will tell me to put such and such a section first, then the second comment will tell me that this section really needs to be the first thing in the document, and later in the document another comment will tell me that this section absolutely has to be the first thing I talk about). I don’t understand what I am supposed to be writing about, I don’t have enough information to do it, the goalposts keep moving, and I don’t think I can do this, I really don’t. I used to think I was good at my job, but now I wonder if I could ever do it at all, or if I was just somehow bluffing it.

Then I start to wonder what I am going to do with the rest of my life. Can I really do this for the next 40 years? And if not this, what would I do? I don’t really have any other skills. I guess I always thought that I would do something with my life, but now I’m not so sure. Ok, so maybe recording that hit album was always a bit far-fetched, but I always thought I might finally write my novel or something. But I really don’t think I have the conviction, or the time, let alone the talent or inspiration.

In the end I gave up on the document when it got to 6pm yesterday, as I just wasn’t getting anywhere. I took it home with the intention of reading it on the train, but couldn’t quite bring myself to and I ended up just going home and getting an early night. I watched a bit of TV, worked out the guitar chords to “Just Another” and “For Nancy” and tried to get to sleep early while listening to the pumping bass coming through to my room from the living room.

So what do I do now? I can’t leave a job so soon after starting it, even if I could find something else. I suppose I have to just turn up everyday and pretend I am enjoying it. But what’s the point?

Actually, don’t answer that. Maybe it is just the post-festival blues. Normal service will be resumed shortly, with a succession of left-leaning political links, comedy, thoughts, observations and obsessive rantings on indie guitar music.