Oh to have an office

I know I have been somewhat tiresome with my recent rants about work, but it is one of my biggest irritations, no, hates at the moment.  I’ve reached my absolute fill, the homeworking quota has been exceeded, my own company is becoming tedious and I have to escape.  I daydream about the good old days (with rose tinted glasses of course) when I worked in an office. Oh how I miss the daily commute, the people watching, the office gossip, the office politics, the impromptu drinks after work and the regular, face to face contact with other human beings.  As the years tick by, I feel I’m slowly losing the ability to communicate, I’m becoming introverted and find it difficult to make idle chit chat with people who ask ‘how has your week been?’.  For the most part, my working weeks are quiet, monotonous, uneventful, uninteresting, uninspiring…you get the drift. 

As my other half comes home each evening, eager to plonk on the sofa and relax in the peace and quiet,  I’m looking to escape the confines of the apartment which seems to be getting smaller by the day.    That’s the problem you see, if you don’t go to work, then you don’t come home from work – it all just blurs into one.  There’s no shaking off the day when you walk out of the office building. I just turn from my work computer to my home computer – I’m in the same chair, at the same desk, in the same box room. I eat dinner, I go to bed, I get up, eat breakfast and sit at my desk ready to do it all over again.  *Sigh*  I think the ideal balance would be to work in an office three days a week and have two very focused days at home.  That way I could have the best of both worlds because no matter how much I whinge, there are definitely some upsides to working at home.

Anyway, before you start playing your mini violins, here is today’s cartoon on the subject:

Image

Mind melt

Recently I have had a series of what can only be described as premature senior  moments.   These range from the usual, I’ve-walked-into-the-kitchen-to-get-something-but-now-I-haven’t-a-clue-what-that-something-is or putting-boiled-water-on-my-cereal-instead-of-milk moments, to more the irritating organisational failures.  Last week:

  • I double booked a couple of meetings.
  • I bought a non-refundable/non-moveable train ticket to Brussels only to discover afterwards that I’m scheduled to deliver a training course in England on the date I’m away.
  • I drove 50 miles up the motorway when my petrol light came on.  After another few miles, I pulled into the petrol station and reached for my purse only to find I hadn’t brought it with me. Unsure whether I’d make it home on the red light, I had to humbly scrounge some money from one of the delegates at my training course.  I’m thankful for small mercies – at least I hadn’t filled the tank BEFORE I realised I had no money. That could have made for an interesting cartoon!

So, either I’m showing early signs of Alzheimer’s (God forbid) or my brain just has far too much information to process.   I hope it’s the latter and suspect this is what happens…

Life drawing

In a recent bid to get myself out of the house more often, I decided to go to Life Drawing lessons with a friend of mine.  It’s been some time since I sat in front of a naked person (with the intention of drawing them), so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  

At previous classes, the model has been in the middle of a large room, with plenty of personal space for everyone.  This session was rather more intimate and my low chair meant my line of vision was, shall we say…unfortunate.  

Funnily enough, and without consciously deciding to, I managed to omit all traces of genitalia from my sketches.  It wasn’t until I started to draw the scenario in cartoon format that I realised what I’d done.    Anyway – I’ve just spent most of the day drawing this strip instead of doing my tax returns.