Getting My Head Back In The Game – The Climb #179

Wednesday 19^th July 2017

I attended the first day of a big departmental meeting with the day job today. I don’t tend to enjoy these because I rarely see the value in what we discuss. Because the area I work in is very specialised, 90% of these things usually end up being of no relevance to me.
But I have to say that it wasn’t too bad for a change. Possibly because I have so much else on my mind right now, my head just doesn’t have the room to get stressed about this. So I just went with the flow.
There’s the possibility of a slight promotion doing more of the area I enjoy. It’d be under a new manager so I’d be wary of that. I work best when I get left to it. Some managers want to get in and try and manage me, and it just always rubs me up the wrong way. It’s better if we discuss long term vision, come to agreement and then just let me get on with it.
However, all this depends on so many factors, any of which might not happen. And then there’s the whole writing career thing… so many variables that it’s not worth worrying about.
The thing I was most worrying about today was the tournament I ran tonight. As I said, it was either going to be brilliant or totally shit. I’m glad to say it was the former.
I lined all the students up and then paired the most experienced with the least experienced. They had to work as a team, deciding which team member to play when their turn came around. The lesser experienced players got double points, and to add even more complication into it, there were cards they could play.
These cards ranged from a Joker double points card, to being allowed to insult people’s fencing, deny the opponent points for hits to certain parts of the body and getting bonus points for other parts.
It was meant to give the students a taste of tactics and I think it really worked. Everyone seemed to have a load of fun so I was really, really pleased with that.
However, to counter that, I’ve heard Matt – who I beat up on Monday night – is pretty bruised. I feel quite guilty about that, even though I’ve already apologised to him and bought him a drink. I bet he’s hoping he’s not in my group this weekend.
I have another morning of departmental meeting tomorrow and then my plan is that from tomorrow afternoon I’m just going to shut myself off from people and use the time to relax and get some focus. I’m pretty sure that my problem on Monday was that my head was not in the fencing. And so I now have a couple of days to correct that.
However, given that I got home at 2am, and have to be up at 6am to get ready for day 2 of the day job meeting, I’m going to be pretty tired tomorrow. So I plan to spend the evening chilling out with some Warcraft and then get an early night.
That’s the plan anyway.
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