A small window

My new role at work has sideswiped me with its intensity. This I knew it would do, but that knowledge isn’t the same as actually experiencing it.  I have noticed, however, that such constant activity and things-to-be-done means I have no time at day’s end for the kind of morbid thoughts that otherwise easily preoccupy not only Roast Beef, at right, (click through for the whole sorrowful cartoon) but also, at times, your humble author.

I am reminded daily that to step up to new tasks and a new challenge means executing new nuances of Fail.  I am making mistakes already.  I hope to make fewer in future, and not to let too many people down in the process.

With so much to do, my usual preoccupations have receded a little, in my mind at least.  The life online buzzes in the background, a fact that leaves me feeling vaguely disloyal to my there-embedded friends.  Everyday teaching seems to occur at a sped-up pace.  My exchange students are at the end of their first week already, and my programme students a quarter of a way through their courses.  My ear seems to be improving; some days I can hear better than others as I await my specialist’s appointment next week, although I am worried (in the spirit of Twitter’s #whitewhine) that I might not be able to fly to Japan next month if it isn’t coming properly right.

These are all good problems to have, even as I feel as if my mental stretching is somehow a physical process too, or that the toughening up of me that will necessarily take place in this role will result in some kind of authorial leathering.  I’ve been humming Bill Bailey’s song about low-level problems (the one I sang to a number of you in Wellington last month, I believe) as a way of distracting and consoling myself during the simmering anxiety of the daily round.

You texted me on a Thursday to say that you would meet me
At the shopping centre
And I texted you back and said, “Where shall I meet you?”
And you said, “Dixons”.
But I did not know which Dixons you meant:
Was it the one inside the door,
Or the one further up, by Currys?

These are my worries.

At home the señor and I find our language devolved into a kind of Conchords-patois; questions are automatically appended with the Murray-couplet.  “A little bit?  A little bit, eh.”  It opens a small window on fretfulness without letting the ill wind right into the house.  This seems as good away to go forward as any.

Tagged as: work, worry