I’m in a period of particularly intense focus at work at the moment and that’s not leaving me a lot of spare bandwidth for blogging. Life continues merrily. Despite the first signs of autumn gathering gloomily (mist over the common a few mornings ago), we’ve still got our annual South Coast seaside celebration to look forward to, so sunshine is still firmly on the agenda.
Normal service will resume in about a week and a half. In the meantime, my thoughts may be marginally more half baked than usual – apologies!
We were at a lovely wedding a couple of weekends ago – the one wedding we’ve been able to get to this year – of a pair of close friends of mine from University. We took the opportunity to catch up with many friends across our friendship group. People lamented that we hadn’t managed to schedule visits for a number of them and – in all honesty, this is principally our bad and Amanda and I are going to sort it.
There is, however, a busy-ness that comes with the early days of parenthood (who knows if it ever fades? I don’t think it will for a few years) that people without children don’t always seem to fully understand – or at least, sympathise with. The obligations (and indeed, desire for) time with close family, the developmental activities you schedule for the little one, and the sheer, relentless routine of feeding, playing and tidying up the aforementioned play and feeding entails. We’ve been good about making sure that we’re the kind of parents that are happy to take Emily out of the house – and even travel to an extent- but we do try to apply consideration to how disruptive one thing or another is to her.
This notwithstanding; diary inspection begins and we’ll start plotting out some fun visits for the weeks and months ahead. Currently booking in dates in late September…!!
My Dad always had trouble switching off when he left the office when he was younger. Being a corporate lawyer defined him to the core of his being, and it was hard to leave behind the challenges and conundrums his work threw at him. He revels in the intellectual challenge.
Me – much as I love both my job and the challenges it present, I generally have no problem turning off the work vibe when I get home. My wonderful family and my myriad hobbies have a way of occupying the time, emotional and cerebral space.
Every now and then, though, when things are particularly busy, it creeps through. Last night’s dreams saw me travelling around London with a former colleague trying to solve some indeterminate and ludicrously complex client challenge.
The worst thing about work-related dreams, even the vague ones, is that when you wake up – you feel like you’ve already done a few hours worth of work. I need to find a cure – the usual process of vegging out with TV / reading a book / hanging out with the family is generally super-effective but when things are extra busy, well… some extra tonic may be needed.
Armand David's personal weblog: dadhood, technology, running, media, food, stuff and nonsense.
