Dark Thoughts

I feel like I am forever on planes. Here I sit again, in the business class lounge at Singapore Airport, waiting for my flight home to Perth. Another week in China, another upset tummy, though at least I fared better than my travelling companion who has nearly 24 hours of travel combatting vomitting and a seriously upset tummy. This trip took me to the back blocks of Inner Mongolia and Gansu provinces to show some cosultants around two of the projects that I'm working on.

Overall it was a good, and very productive trip, though it was long and tiring. Travel nearly every day, with a 12 hour train trip thrown in for good measure. Actually I don't mind chinese train trips, though do be sure to get a soft sleeper, preferably the entire cabin, though the train service is notorious for re-assigning your bookings at random, so your 4 seats may well be spread over 4 cabins.

In this case we got half lucky. We booked 2 cabins for 5 of us (8 seats) and got 1 cabin plus four random seats in 4 other different cabins. It worked out quite well, because you can comfortably seat 5 people in 1 cabin, though there is only room for 4 if you lay down or sleep.

I managed to get a bit of shopping done in China, and bought lots of silk for Jode's (both for painting and for sewing). I got here a few other surprises too (though I won't mention them here, in case she reads this entry before I arrive back in Perth, and that will ruin the surprise.

Anyway, I'm feeling tired, and not really in the rambling kind of mood, so this entry will be breif. I've got to work out what to do for the next hour until my flight boards. Something that will ensure that I'm awake to board the plane and results in me sleeping soon thereafter, preferably. I'm sure I'll sort something out.

Life takes us on a strange journey at times. You can never be sure what is just around the next corner, and behind the next door. Life has certainly served me up much food for thought recently. I've been very reflective of late, seemingly eternally considering the future.

This actually seems a lot more dramatic than it actually is. The sorts of things on my mind are wondering if Jode's will truly find happiness with the change in her job. Leaving her current employer is something that I think she really needed to do. She tried a number of ways to change things at her work, and to see if she could change things about her job about which she was dissatisfied, but without much luck (or apparent support from her employer). The overloaded work and broken promises were really getting her down.

It's a bit of a tricky time for us financially. Planning a wedding and awaiting the settlement of a vacant house, means that finances will be a bit tight until she finds a new job, but I think it's more than worth it. A job closer to home, in a more friendly and closeknit team will suit her more than the current high pressure corporate role. I think Jode's is going through a similar phase now, to what I went through a few years ago. In my case, my value to the large company I worked for became apparent when they started addressing my mail to my payroll number. How much more impersonal can you get.

Sometimes, I think we forget that a job is a part of our lives, and it needs to harmonize with the rest of our time. A job is not something that we should feel that we are sacrificing something to do. The fact is, that we are selling our time to a business, and we should feel that we are being well compensated for that, and also that we are appreciated in our efforts. While having a good job is a priveledge that I feel we should earn, (though example and experience), I also feel that it is also a priveledge for the company to have good, dedicated employees, and they should also earn that priviledge though example and experience.

For a workforce to be happy and enjoy their employment a balance needs to be struck between the employee and the company. Mutual respect needs to exist, and consideration needs to be given both to the employees life outside of work, and to the company's continuing development.

In Jodie's case, I felt that there was not enough consideration given to the amount of work being expected of one person, and not enough support given to help her cope with the ever increasing workload. The company in question pride's itself on looking after it's employees, but, as with many large company's the gesture is largely cosmetic, and empty. The upper management believes it, and the workers at the coal face want it to be true, but somewhere in the myriad of middle management the whole concept gets corrupted as everyone tramples each other as they strive for some sort of empty accolade from the company or from their peers or bosses.

People want some sort of quazi fame for making money or acheiving some other goal, and give scant regard to who gets kicked to the ground on the way around.

This was partially the impetus of the whole Industrial/Cyberpunk sub-cultures, along with a pointed response to corporate greed and irresponsibility.

Anyway, needless to say, I fully support Jodie's quest for a job that she can enjoy, and where she is valued by her employer.

Weight loss, wedding planning and financial management are other issues that are skating over my mind. It seems that there is so much to be done, and trying to find time and resources for it all, and even thinking about how we are going to manage it all over the coming months is leaving me somewhat exhausted. Jode's and I have decided that we are going to do the Landmark forum and a well meaning friend went ahead and signed us up. That's all well and good, but the timing isn't really very good for us, in terms of our financial commitments.

The whole hard sell, push-push thing is the singlular aspect of Landmark that I abhor, and it seems that this is something that the well-meaning friend has adopted. The friend has decided that we need to do this (and perhaps we do), and seems intent on getting us to go along. The thing is, we want to go, but we want to do it when we can financially afford to do it, rather than getting a guilt trip because someone has booked us, paid our deposit, meaning that we feel somewhat compelled to pay them back ASAP.

For me, that's realistically going to be when the house settles. Selling a house is the way that we have decided to liquify some of our assetts. Having a high net worth is pretty well useless if you can't afford to put food on the table, and while things ain't quite that bad, the cashflow squeeze is certainly impinging on our lifestyle in a manner that neither Jode's or I are completely happy with.

Somehow we need to find time to deal with all of this. It's difficult to find additional time when you are forever worrying and tired, and I have been feeling both of late. There's lots that needs to be done around the house to keep life ticking over, like cooking, cleaning, gardening, bookwork etc, without the added burdens of finding time for exercise, looking for new jobs, and playing catchup with all those things that keep us sane. Tempers (for both of us) get frayed when we are stressed, and that's yet another element that get's thrown into the mix for us both to deal with.

I strongly feel that we are through the worst of it, in terms of our own personal stresses, and that the changes we have been making for the last few months is starting to pay off, though sometimes it is hard to see the light at the end of it. Things will move quickly once we have the injection of cash from the sale of the house, and will completely free up our finances, so we aren't squeezed in the same way. We can then get on and sort out some of the more pressing needs (such as renovations). Hopefully this will have the flow on affect of releiving stress as we come home to a place that we heartily enjoy every aspect of.

Well, that's my stream of conciousness for today. I'm not sure if it's reasonable, coherent, reasonable or anything else. It's simply my brain connected directly to my keyboard and doesn't even necessarily reflect how I'm generally feeling. Tomorrow, I'll probably feel completely differently, but this is, afterall, The Circus of my Mind!