"Sometimes the trouble with life, I find, it gets you in a corner with no way out, fills your head with doubt. Somehow the good things in life, I find, they seem to be beyond the far horizon, just the other side. Struck down with a heavy load, getting heavier day by day, now a real go-getter wouldn't talk like that, he would get up, get up and say, 'don't turn back, now you've got this far' " [Bucks Fizz]
This morning was so apocalyptically bad weather, the kind you know is 'out there' being imposing before you've even got up, the kind that forces you to keep the lights on all day, that I resorted to listening to Buck's Fizz. Not necessarily to cheer me up, but just to have a sense of finding an old-fashioned sort of comfort that used to hold some hope, even though it's since been overridden by reality.
[Buck's Fizz. Yes, I know. How could I admit to this? Oh well, sod it. It was comforting. And it helped me retrieve some degree of energy that I had been struggling to find.]
I got through my worst meeting today without losing face. I love it when people make it easy for me to look competent, by showing up unprepared and clueless, even when my reluctance to prepare something so dull threatens to uncover my greatest weakness: i.e. if I'm not interested in it, you can tell straight away. If I find something completely tedious and without the slightest merit, I will indeed be quite literally 'bored to tears' by it. (Filling in tax-returns and doing my accounts or looking at anything in 'Excel' [spit, spit, spit] does this to me for example.) My idiot meet-ee seemed to think I was there as some sort of Jeeves to his rather more arrogant Wooster, and would simply supply him with everything he required so that any work on his part would be rendered unnecessary. He seemed absolutely astounded when I suggested he would do well to actually write a few sentences down.
Sometimes the sheer incompetence and ignorance of others is my saving grace. There I am being the typical perfectionist, seeing all the flaws in my side of the bargain, and I'm wandering around trying to get down to work when the weather and the work itself are making me want to either slit my wrists or eat inordinate amounts of chocolate cake, and it turns out I needn't have worried all that much afterall. The person sitting in front of me when I arrive is in fact still a newcomer to the concept that sometimes you actually have to do some work yourself in order to get a skill. And it doesn't matter how much money you have, my dear little meet-ee, you won't acquire skills and qualities by sitting and waiting for a proverbial plate to be handed to you with a silver spoon to help you swallow the capabilities you wish to acquire.
But, hey, if you're happy to waste your money on hiring me to sit and watch while you discover this, that's fine by me. It's like they always say, "an idiot and his money [and surely it's almost always his, not hers] are soon parted."
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