Today I’m contemplative. I was striding the streets earlier trying to walk off this jetlag, I’ve had enough of it now, when Heaven 17s Temptation came up on the random playlist. Of course, I knew there was a danger this could happen, but hadn’t expected it to hit at such a time, straight after ‘What a wonderful way to go’, a stompy classic. Suddenly I’m back at the Jacquard in Norwich, thinking about all the wonderful times back then. And then, Claire (or was it Clare?), the most beautiful girl in the world. How I’d never spoken to her. What would a guy like me say to the most beautiful girl in the world? And how I’d spoiled it all (and another perfectly good relationship) without even having the embarrassment of talking to her. Back to the Jacquard, to my days on the alternative scene in Norwich, could I pull off a set like that these days? Would anyone remember Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, The Violent Femmes, Creaming Jesus and The Dead Kennedys? Where would you go to hear five Army songs of an evening these days? Would anyone let me near the decks again? Of course, I never spun at the Jacquard, that was Johns domain. But I had a go on the radio, how different can it be? Thinking about missing another Intrusion this week, and all the people back in Oxford. About how I’m not around them any more, its like I don’t exist, how Oxgoths won’t let me post because I’m spam but it still fills my mailbox with spam. And how none of this is a surprise. Then I remember the other day, when I was listening to a different playlist, thinking how much sense Bon Jovi was making, “I don’t know where I’m going and only I knows where I’ve been”, “Another place where the faces are so cold”. Waiting in my mailbox when I get home is a letter from someone I’d not really expected to hear from again. “Its all the same, only the names are changed”.
The question is – what can I do about it? How can I make it better next time? Where do I go from here? Maybe its time for a five year plan? Something that will amuse me looking back in five years time, either for the sheer ambition it contains or for the lack of it. Something that will immediately make Piercarlo laugh, but nearly anything I could put into it would amuse him with its naivety.
The way I deal with people needs to change – everything is businesslike, formal, justified. I don’t do irrational, everything needs a reason.
My decisionmaking is poor. I’m too worried about offending people with the wrong decision, so worried I offend them by not making one. I don’t understand people, what they want, why they behave the way they do.
Back to the plan. In five years time I will be doing a job that will allow me to work from anywhere in the world at the times I choose to work. I will live in a remote place in a civilised country where I speak the language (probably English, if my experiences here are anything to go by). I will travel a lot and most of my work will be done on the road. I will interact with lots of different people in my work, but it will be heavily technical in nature, and, I hope, will not involve me carrying details of an entire operating system in my head.
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