Dancing in the Rain

I have wasted an awful lot of my life. Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining about where I am now or how I got here. I have a fabulous life and I'm very lucky.

Obviously I procrastinate. I asked for a planner for Christmas and I even put off filling it in. I spend time doing the frivolous when there's things I need to do.

I have spent a ludicrous amount of time playing games online and freemium games on my mobile and tablet. I think I am close to watching all the videos on YouTube and if I haven't box set binged it on Netflix I will do soon.

But whilst all of these are time wasting activities I do not regret any of them. Maybe a little bit of me regrets the amount of money I've spent on freemium games but those donuts/diamonds/coins won't buy themselves.

The biggest waste of my life has been the amount of time I've spent worrying about the past. I'm not even talking about the big regrets a person has, the I wish I'd done that while I had the chance or where you're at a crossroads and you picked a certain route when you perhaps should have taken another. I'm talking about the little insignificant day to day things that you just can't escape from. It's those tiny things where I've said something to someone that could have been taken the wrong way or I've used language that might have offended someone are among many other things that keep me awake at night.

My brain seems to want to store all these little insignificant memories which could be harmful to people's perception of me and bring them back to haunt me when I least expect it. The idiotic thing about it all is that I can do absolutely nothing to change it.

Every single person in the world is running the gauntlet of life every day plagued by the spears of their psyche which try to trip them up along the way. Obviously there are varying degrees of severity with this otherwise the streets would be awash with completely neurotic people frightened to look in to each other's eyes for fear that it might be misconstrued.

I have spent a long time fearing that I was the only one who felt like this. I was sure that nobody else must have these neuroses about the minuscule and insignificant goings on of everyday life. Then I had an epiphany: I was never going to find out. The last thing a neurotic person wants to do is confess their neurotic tendencies. If you're constantly looking backwards you can't admit to it because then somebody knows how easy it is to trip you up. So you hide it. You hide it under a shell of boundless enthusiasm and extroversion in an effort to make no one question you. At least that's what I do.

I thought to myself if it's that easy to pretend to enjoy life and take each moment as it comes with an unequivocal optimism how difficult could it be to stop pretending and just do it? Life isn't easy and not everyone is going to like me. I can be horrible but I can also be brilliant. I shouldn't waste so much time worrying about how people perceive me but spend more time working to just be myself and enjoy life for what it is.

Life is hard and some days I'm going to be grumpy and I just have to accept it. The rainy days are the hardest ones to get through but the storm passes and we've all been through it. All of our neurotic little brains are banging away trying to make sense of this ridiculous existence that we all belong to. We're all in it together. We just need to learn to dance in the rain.

When I think back to how much time I have spent dwelling on the insignificant and worrying about the stupid it makes me furious. I then immediately realise the irony of this and think about what I'm going to do to make tomorrow better instead. It's a steep learning curve but at least I'm trying. Baby steps.

Until next time.

One week

I am a week in to my new job and I love it. It's such a good atmosphere and everyone seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet. There's a real sense of comradery within the team and I'd completely forgotten what that felt like.

It's really odd to be at a desk in front of a computer all day. I've never experienced anything like it. It's also a little bit peculiar wearing a headset. I'd worn one before when I'd been answering the phones for comic relief but they were single ear headsets and the one I've got now covers both ears - a bit like a gaming headset. Proper weird and difficult to hear everyone around me - probably a good thing in the future so I don't get distracted but while I'm training and need constant prompting it's been tricksy.

I've also learnt I'm bloody terrible at note taking and making things succinct. I think I'll get better at this when I start to learn what is important I note down and what isn't. I am also awful at taking people's names - every time you speak with someone you have to note their name. I'll probably get better at that with time too.

There a metric ton of stuff to learn. It's like learning a new language in some systems - although POD will always mean Proof of Deposit. One of the systems we use appears to run on DOS - my trainer refers to it as the Ceefax system - and it runs on typed commands and it's essentially a guessing game to try and get t to work.

I'm really enjoying it so far and I hope that I can continue to enjoy it. There's another newbie joining next week though so I won't be the new kid anymore. Obviously I'll still be new-ish but I won't be shop shiny new. Happy days.

Until next time.