This Too Shall Pass
Amongst a broad variety of seemingly relatively simple things I've always seemed to mystifyingly struggle with, I do often seem to find a distinct difficulty in quite predicting just how the world is going to appear from day to day. By which I mean, the general mood I find myself waking with may often seem to bear little connection to the one I went to bed with, but then in some instances that might be the case even just from hour to hour. From this you'd think I might learn that the one constant of life is change and whatever bleakness may at sometime frame my perspective I can count on it being only a temporary phase. Of course though, it doesn't often seem to play out like that and when one set of feelings takes a hold of my senses it can become quite impossible to imagine the world might be seen in another way. This in turn can then seem to render an unsettling degree of cognitive dissonance actually being the one constant in my experience of this thing we call living. Perhaps that is just how life is though and I just tend to make something of a meal of it? Heh, needless to say though, when I woke on Sunday feeling unexpectedly alert and almost mildly positive about the day ahead I was immediately rendered deeply suspicious about what tricks the universe might have had up its sleeves for me! Mayhap not the best way to appreciate such a gift of a morning, especially when the morning is very rarely my kind of day but having not had a great deal of sleep that night I was expecting waking with quite different sensations. As it was though I can't say the day threw any particularly dramatic trauma but on the other hand it wasn't too long before that sense of liveliness had worn off to be replaced with some quite weary and reluctant limbs and a particular sense of spiritual ennui. I got through the day ok, but it was distinctly without any particular eagerness and a whole bunch of stuff I probably should have got done ended up not being. Hm, but I don't suppose there's anything much new in me no taking action on any of the positive thoughts for activities I might have, regardless of the degree of energy I might have in my possession. So it was though that Sunday ended up something of wearied day in the end although the supply of customers were steady without being too difficult so overall it wasn't really too bad, if nothing that might be termed particularly inspiring either.
Monday at the Coliseum still held some lingering degree of tired but it had it's little entertainments to keep me amused. Chief among these occurred when the folk upstairs received an email notifying them of the necessity to renew their domain registration for the use of Google Apps. The humans were rather uncertain as to whether this was thing they necessarily had to pay for, I passed on the information that I rather thought that it was, and then the humans had some difficulty working out just how they were supposed to go about that renewal process. So it was I ended up making a rare trip to the dizzying heights to play about on the computers in the office upstairs. In fairness, Google would not appear to make it as straightforward as it could be to renew payments for their services to business, but on the other hand neither did it take me too much tinkering to see which options I needed to activate to facilitate the process. I can't though say the humans really seem to make things very easy for themselves and I'm not entirely sure quite how much time they've spent actually investigating the systems they be paying for, besides who they are actually paying. Quite whether it's my place to be making any comment that the finance department seems to have had no idea from whom they leasing the various Internet domains they've purchased (or indeed why we have two separate domains from one provider and yet another company providing the webspace) but I'm just a little volunteer that saunters in to help out from time to time. Anyways, apparently now explanations have been made so they should know what we have hired, and from whom, but it remains to be seen quite how much attention anyone upstairs is really paying with my online tinkerings. Speaking of which though, in my absence from the Coliseum on Tuesday I had to grudgingly pass over my login details for the web admin (so they don't actually know their own login details for their own website either?) to allow another of their little volunteer helpers to add a thing that apparently needed adding. Come Wednesday I had tidy thing up a bit, although apparently I'd missed an entertaining day of confusion and grumpiness whilst I'd been at the shop, although I wonder at how that would be much different to the usual state affairs I would often seem to find there! Ah well, as far as I can tell things be relatively in hand there at the moment, insofar as they may ever be, and hopefully they won't miss my presence too much since I'm not going to be there on Monday as I should just be returning from my travels to Sheffield at that point. Still, mildly amusing little fun and games there in any case but we'll see what may yet come to pass with the projected projects that had been in the works.
Meanwhile, my time at the shop this week was enlivened no end with an unexpected visit from the beloved area manager on Tuesday. The day had already been quite impressively enlivened with a most unexpectedly heavy flurry of snow which I was mildly taken aback by when I stepped out the door that day. The weather had said there may be a little of the white stuff around but I hadn't been expecting such heaviness nor plumply fluffy five centimetre clumps of flakes streaming from the sky. It did actually look quite impressively pretty, at least as long as the wind wasn't blowing towards you, and then you ended up with a wall of snow in your face. Sadly though none of it seemed particularly keen on the idea on settling so there hasn't been any repeat of pretty snow scenes to take any pictures of. Needless to say though, the excess of snows led to rather distinct dearth of any customers so I hadn't much to occupy myself with on the till whilst my glamourous assistant did what little could be done with the few books we had in the back cupboard. My book department has though now been very subtly reduced in size with one entire row of shelving carefully removed, leaving us with but six rows along the wall rather than previous seven. It does feel something of a shame to be reducing things but with the new policies it was really going to be impossible to keep that many shelves looking reasonably filled and with the six shelves spaced out a little more up the wall you really couldn't tell there was anything missing unless you knew. Certainly none of the regular customers seemed to have mentioned anything about the difference in any case. I fear it may yet prove a bit of a struggle to keep even these shelves looking pretty but we did at least have a couple new deliveries of stocks over Tuesday and Wednesday although, since I've been poking at the till, I haven't really had much of an opportunity to get them herded into pens and see just what we've been provided with. The flow of stock and lack of storage space are not the only difficulties, the lack of time I have to devote to my flock is also somewhat problematic if we're going to keep up with culling the shelves every two weeks. Heh, it may also depend on quite how much vitality I may be able to muster in my soul on any given day which, as mentioned previously, is not something I find I can ever put much of a guarantee on! Oh well, I wait to see with some small trepidation quite how my little cupboard is going to look when I gets back down there on Friday. When I left it was stuffed full of bags of books. Maybe it still will be when I get down there or mayhap it will have all been helpfully tidied and arranged, but hopefully by someone with at least some small idea of what kind of book goes with what, besides some idea of their alphabet! Whoever did some helpful filling of the shelves on Monday clearly hadn't the clearest idea, particularly since for some reason they then went on and apparently put out a whole shelf of DVDs still on the product code for books. Oh well, just another work environment where not every folk clearly has the tightest grip on the mechanics involved in their processes.
Inbetween all this nonsense though there is the somewhat more festive business of preparations for my step-mother's shiny 60th birthday this weekend, although me being me, I probably find the word 'festive' to have a somewhat more troubling meaning than most other people! Still, having emailed the fairy job folk in Scarborough and talked a bit with big sister I think I more or less has a fix on my travel arrangements at least. I shall be departing on Saturday and staying with big sister and her little family which means another journey to a place I'm not altogether certain how to get to! Still, from what I can see it looks relatively straightforward, getting the train to the little station of Chapeltown, but half an hour's walk from big sister's abode out on the edge of the environs of Sheffield. I don't thinks getting there should prove too traumatic. I do yet find myself wondering quite how the overall adventure may yet turn out however. Not that I should have any reason to worry at all, just a nice, friendly family gathering. Almost a little re-run of Christmas in many ways. As yet though I've yet to prove able to encourage any sense of eager anticipation or excitement about the prospect. At best I finds myself harbouring a sort of heavy determination that this is just a little thing I should be able to get through and survive. That's the sense of my feelings though, in the rational parts of my brain I do look forward to the prospect of seeing sister and brother and sister-in-law and brother-in-law and nephew and step family and all besides but that's very far from anything I have yet really felt. If you can appreciate what I means. Perhaps it doesn't much help that more or less straight after, or at least on the Wednesday now I has rearranged my appointments, I have the fun of a mock interview to go through and the extra burden of nerves that that entails. Of course I chose to put myself through that in the hope that having another go at practicing this sort of thing will eventually someday help me to feel that death may not actually be preferable to the efforts required to get on with living. Hm, somehow though I don't seem to have quite learned that yet despite all my previous attempts and practices which is more than a little frustrating. I am, after all, a reasonably intelligent creature and I know the things that ought to be good for me, yet the feelings that they elicit still render this life to feel like a heavy burden indeed and and my flesh would yet seem to feel far greater reward from not getting out of bed, or collapsing in some forgotten corner, than it does from actually doing these things or even the more straightforwardly enjoyable activities like computer play which even then requires a whole bunch of mental effort to convince myself to do sometimes.
Perhaps though, that is just life? The way my feelings twist and turn I'm not really sure at all what might constitute a reasonable sensibility when it comes to living. Do anything has to require some sort of effort, but I confess I find it hard to imagine myself that it should be quite so much, or that doing good things should so often feel like they are directly opposed to what seems my natural urges. Spending so much time on my own though, I wouldn't really know, and since as far back in my childhood as I can remember, other people have seemed like somewhat strangely distant and alien sorts of creatures in their way. That perspective grows more or less extreme as my moods alter but never quite seems to entirely go away. I remain now, more or less as I have ever seemed to be, somewhat lost and uncertain of my place in a world that seems to slither out my grasp whenever I try to reach at it. Even my sense of self is something I find myself unable to feel altogether certain about. Still, from what other people have told me at least, everyone else out their faces their own existential puzzles as well but beyond those attempted reassurances I yet can't help but think myself at the further end of that complicated spectrum. At least as far as some of the stupid choices I've made over my lifetime though I can't say that really warrants me any greater degree of sympathy than any other of these human creatures with whom I share a planet. Indeed, in some senses all I can really do is to continue to shamble onwards as best I may through whatever circumstance a combination of my own will and the universe at large can manufacture. At any rate things presently at least feel a little less desperate than they did at times during the previous month but on the other it still feels something of a decidedly unnecessary burden to drag myself through life which I don't yet feel the greatest eagerness. Mayhap though my travels of this weekend might yet be able to engender some delights and enjoyments that I might possibly bring back with me to make some positive use of those feelings to light the rest of my livings here. I can't say things are too despairing here right now, but I'm still a wearied creature and methinks I shall yet need to see at least some little improvements shortly if I'm not to find myself altogether worn out in not too short an order. Still, if this unpredictable world and my untrustworthy emotions can teach me anything, and however stubbornly resistant to such learning I would seem to be, it's that this too shall pass one way or another and the world will yet change and myself along with it, I but hope that shall prove to be in a fluffier and more sparkly direction. For now though hopefully I can has me a quiet evening ahead with some amusing and interesting televisual enjoyments, perhaps a little further fantastical adventurings in Guild Wars 2 or maybe some reading and stuffs. Heh, I guess life isn't all existential angst and self-indulgent personal philosophising. In the meantime I hopes all you nice friendly peoples has pleasant evenings ahead too and in appreciation of all the kindly supportive friendships I shall shares as much sparkly wishes and extra fluffiness that I might be able to muster in the meantime. Do feel free to makes whatever use of it you might wish. I'll be seeing you!
Monday at the Coliseum still held some lingering degree of tired but it had it's little entertainments to keep me amused. Chief among these occurred when the folk upstairs received an email notifying them of the necessity to renew their domain registration for the use of Google Apps. The humans were rather uncertain as to whether this was thing they necessarily had to pay for, I passed on the information that I rather thought that it was, and then the humans had some difficulty working out just how they were supposed to go about that renewal process. So it was I ended up making a rare trip to the dizzying heights to play about on the computers in the office upstairs. In fairness, Google would not appear to make it as straightforward as it could be to renew payments for their services to business, but on the other hand neither did it take me too much tinkering to see which options I needed to activate to facilitate the process. I can't though say the humans really seem to make things very easy for themselves and I'm not entirely sure quite how much time they've spent actually investigating the systems they be paying for, besides who they are actually paying. Quite whether it's my place to be making any comment that the finance department seems to have had no idea from whom they leasing the various Internet domains they've purchased (or indeed why we have two separate domains from one provider and yet another company providing the webspace) but I'm just a little volunteer that saunters in to help out from time to time. Anyways, apparently now explanations have been made so they should know what we have hired, and from whom, but it remains to be seen quite how much attention anyone upstairs is really paying with my online tinkerings. Speaking of which though, in my absence from the Coliseum on Tuesday I had to grudgingly pass over my login details for the web admin (so they don't actually know their own login details for their own website either?) to allow another of their little volunteer helpers to add a thing that apparently needed adding. Come Wednesday I had tidy thing up a bit, although apparently I'd missed an entertaining day of confusion and grumpiness whilst I'd been at the shop, although I wonder at how that would be much different to the usual state affairs I would often seem to find there! Ah well, as far as I can tell things be relatively in hand there at the moment, insofar as they may ever be, and hopefully they won't miss my presence too much since I'm not going to be there on Monday as I should just be returning from my travels to Sheffield at that point. Still, mildly amusing little fun and games there in any case but we'll see what may yet come to pass with the projected projects that had been in the works.
Meanwhile, my time at the shop this week was enlivened no end with an unexpected visit from the beloved area manager on Tuesday. The day had already been quite impressively enlivened with a most unexpectedly heavy flurry of snow which I was mildly taken aback by when I stepped out the door that day. The weather had said there may be a little of the white stuff around but I hadn't been expecting such heaviness nor plumply fluffy five centimetre clumps of flakes streaming from the sky. It did actually look quite impressively pretty, at least as long as the wind wasn't blowing towards you, and then you ended up with a wall of snow in your face. Sadly though none of it seemed particularly keen on the idea on settling so there hasn't been any repeat of pretty snow scenes to take any pictures of. Needless to say though, the excess of snows led to rather distinct dearth of any customers so I hadn't much to occupy myself with on the till whilst my glamourous assistant did what little could be done with the few books we had in the back cupboard. My book department has though now been very subtly reduced in size with one entire row of shelving carefully removed, leaving us with but six rows along the wall rather than previous seven. It does feel something of a shame to be reducing things but with the new policies it was really going to be impossible to keep that many shelves looking reasonably filled and with the six shelves spaced out a little more up the wall you really couldn't tell there was anything missing unless you knew. Certainly none of the regular customers seemed to have mentioned anything about the difference in any case. I fear it may yet prove a bit of a struggle to keep even these shelves looking pretty but we did at least have a couple new deliveries of stocks over Tuesday and Wednesday although, since I've been poking at the till, I haven't really had much of an opportunity to get them herded into pens and see just what we've been provided with. The flow of stock and lack of storage space are not the only difficulties, the lack of time I have to devote to my flock is also somewhat problematic if we're going to keep up with culling the shelves every two weeks. Heh, it may also depend on quite how much vitality I may be able to muster in my soul on any given day which, as mentioned previously, is not something I find I can ever put much of a guarantee on! Oh well, I wait to see with some small trepidation quite how my little cupboard is going to look when I gets back down there on Friday. When I left it was stuffed full of bags of books. Maybe it still will be when I get down there or mayhap it will have all been helpfully tidied and arranged, but hopefully by someone with at least some small idea of what kind of book goes with what, besides some idea of their alphabet! Whoever did some helpful filling of the shelves on Monday clearly hadn't the clearest idea, particularly since for some reason they then went on and apparently put out a whole shelf of DVDs still on the product code for books. Oh well, just another work environment where not every folk clearly has the tightest grip on the mechanics involved in their processes.
Inbetween all this nonsense though there is the somewhat more festive business of preparations for my step-mother's shiny 60th birthday this weekend, although me being me, I probably find the word 'festive' to have a somewhat more troubling meaning than most other people! Still, having emailed the fairy job folk in Scarborough and talked a bit with big sister I think I more or less has a fix on my travel arrangements at least. I shall be departing on Saturday and staying with big sister and her little family which means another journey to a place I'm not altogether certain how to get to! Still, from what I can see it looks relatively straightforward, getting the train to the little station of Chapeltown, but half an hour's walk from big sister's abode out on the edge of the environs of Sheffield. I don't thinks getting there should prove too traumatic. I do yet find myself wondering quite how the overall adventure may yet turn out however. Not that I should have any reason to worry at all, just a nice, friendly family gathering. Almost a little re-run of Christmas in many ways. As yet though I've yet to prove able to encourage any sense of eager anticipation or excitement about the prospect. At best I finds myself harbouring a sort of heavy determination that this is just a little thing I should be able to get through and survive. That's the sense of my feelings though, in the rational parts of my brain I do look forward to the prospect of seeing sister and brother and sister-in-law and brother-in-law and nephew and step family and all besides but that's very far from anything I have yet really felt. If you can appreciate what I means. Perhaps it doesn't much help that more or less straight after, or at least on the Wednesday now I has rearranged my appointments, I have the fun of a mock interview to go through and the extra burden of nerves that that entails. Of course I chose to put myself through that in the hope that having another go at practicing this sort of thing will eventually someday help me to feel that death may not actually be preferable to the efforts required to get on with living. Hm, somehow though I don't seem to have quite learned that yet despite all my previous attempts and practices which is more than a little frustrating. I am, after all, a reasonably intelligent creature and I know the things that ought to be good for me, yet the feelings that they elicit still render this life to feel like a heavy burden indeed and and my flesh would yet seem to feel far greater reward from not getting out of bed, or collapsing in some forgotten corner, than it does from actually doing these things or even the more straightforwardly enjoyable activities like computer play which even then requires a whole bunch of mental effort to convince myself to do sometimes.
Perhaps though, that is just life? The way my feelings twist and turn I'm not really sure at all what might constitute a reasonable sensibility when it comes to living. Do anything has to require some sort of effort, but I confess I find it hard to imagine myself that it should be quite so much, or that doing good things should so often feel like they are directly opposed to what seems my natural urges. Spending so much time on my own though, I wouldn't really know, and since as far back in my childhood as I can remember, other people have seemed like somewhat strangely distant and alien sorts of creatures in their way. That perspective grows more or less extreme as my moods alter but never quite seems to entirely go away. I remain now, more or less as I have ever seemed to be, somewhat lost and uncertain of my place in a world that seems to slither out my grasp whenever I try to reach at it. Even my sense of self is something I find myself unable to feel altogether certain about. Still, from what other people have told me at least, everyone else out their faces their own existential puzzles as well but beyond those attempted reassurances I yet can't help but think myself at the further end of that complicated spectrum. At least as far as some of the stupid choices I've made over my lifetime though I can't say that really warrants me any greater degree of sympathy than any other of these human creatures with whom I share a planet. Indeed, in some senses all I can really do is to continue to shamble onwards as best I may through whatever circumstance a combination of my own will and the universe at large can manufacture. At any rate things presently at least feel a little less desperate than they did at times during the previous month but on the other it still feels something of a decidedly unnecessary burden to drag myself through life which I don't yet feel the greatest eagerness. Mayhap though my travels of this weekend might yet be able to engender some delights and enjoyments that I might possibly bring back with me to make some positive use of those feelings to light the rest of my livings here. I can't say things are too despairing here right now, but I'm still a wearied creature and methinks I shall yet need to see at least some little improvements shortly if I'm not to find myself altogether worn out in not too short an order. Still, if this unpredictable world and my untrustworthy emotions can teach me anything, and however stubbornly resistant to such learning I would seem to be, it's that this too shall pass one way or another and the world will yet change and myself along with it, I but hope that shall prove to be in a fluffier and more sparkly direction. For now though hopefully I can has me a quiet evening ahead with some amusing and interesting televisual enjoyments, perhaps a little further fantastical adventurings in Guild Wars 2 or maybe some reading and stuffs. Heh, I guess life isn't all existential angst and self-indulgent personal philosophising. In the meantime I hopes all you nice friendly peoples has pleasant evenings ahead too and in appreciation of all the kindly supportive friendships I shall shares as much sparkly wishes and extra fluffiness that I might be able to muster in the meantime. Do feel free to makes whatever use of it you might wish. I'll be seeing you!