Archive for August, 2009

A whole lot of new ness

// August 30th, 2009 // Comments // relationships

This might only be news to you if you live in a hole in the garden, but in life everything seems to happen at once. You drift a long quite peacefully, one day, the next day, the next day la la tedium la la, then BAM just as your getting complacent it drops its shoulder and take a swing at you with all its got. You have little time to do more than try and stay up right and roll with its punches.

Then when its had its fickle fun, the dust settles again. You can look around, work out what just happened and if its resulted in you being in a better spot than before, or if it was your turn to be the bug instead of the windscreen.

I just came out of one of those periods, and now that the dust is settling I can get back to normal, normal being a routine, this blog, photos, music, books, learning German and la la tedium la la. So what’s new? New also comes in threes it seems:

Well I have a new apartment and two new room mates. Steffi and Susi. They are great – friendly, fun and really into having a nice communal shared flat from joint laundry to marathon movie session in the living room in front of the beamer, Its a fantastic WG. They are, although they dispute this – obsessional about cleaning, but once I learn to accept that feeling of guilt that comes from me doing little to support this obsession (beside providing plenty of mess to clean), it does result in a flat so clean you could perform surgery on any of the major surfaces.

I have my own attic room, its epic. It’s not quite the strange lair of my dreams yet, so there are no photos. But it’s getting close. It’s so great to have space and comfortable seating, the attic is huge so I have what feels likes its own apartment up here to rattle around in and house my t-shirt collection.

The second change is that I started a new fun project (with Ami and Pete). This one is selling products for the first time. I think I underestimated how much work it is to create a brand from scratch. So its been a busy few months, but I’m very happy with the result and it should be launching in the next few days. We’re not revealing who is behind it so I won’t link to it here, so if you want to see it and I didn’t already tell you about it just mail me and I’ll send you the link.

I’m aware this post is not attempting humour, I’m hungry and when I’m hungry pretty useless at trying to be funny, or friendly, or anything but grouchy and hungry really.

The third and most major change is Annett got a job. That was the plan and as the hardest working job hunter in the planet, it was just a matter of time, and I think she got the reward for her hard work, landing a very nice job as Junior Project Manager. Only the bit that wasn’t part of the plan was that the job is 7.5 train hours away in Amsterdam. While I’ve only been there once, its a really great city, as everyone attests when you say that she’s gone there, it seems to be a universally liked place. She moved there straight away and is now looking for apartments. Its pretty strange after two intense years of living and travelling together and seeing each other 99% of the days of the year, with only 7 days warning we’re now in a long distance relationship. But this time I have no fixed job so I can travel and spend time there, so I’m confident that will still work and that its not a bad thing for us both to spend a little energy outside of the relationship and have less quantity but more quality time together. Still I have noticed the presence of an Annett shaped hole here in my daily life but I’m doing my best to fill it with work, friends, flat sorting, movies, chocolate. I also vividly remember the excitement and challenge of turning up in a country where you know no one and building a life for yourself, coming to Leipzig is hands down the best decision I ever made so I’m supportive and proud that she’s having her own adventure, even if I’m not really part of it.

I am still happily unemployed, I guess now an office job is not an option for me as I want to travel to Amsterdam one week a month of something similar. Still the sites are doing fairly well, I’m not getting rich but I can just about get by and TeeDirectory is rocking and although its early days I really believe in it if I keep plugging away for another six months I think and hope it will pay the bills.

Now that’s all the news over with so when I’m not hungry I can get back to writing those stranger posts I like so much…

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Unemployment, its a full time job too you know!

// August 5th, 2009 // Comments // Not Serious

(please note that this is just for fun, some creative writing practice and does not mean to offend people working very hard to find jobs, like Annett. It’s just satire bitches…)

I be tired of people being baggin’ on the unemployed. You people need to wake up and smell the special brew! Believe me, it ain’t easy…

Sometime there’s nothing you want less than to get up at midday and sit around the house in your pants watching chat shows. But you do. You do it because that’s your job (and you don’t have the disposable income to be able to do anything else, but that’s incidental). Sure it’s not a well paying job, but sometimes it ain’t about the money, you do that shit for the love of it and because it feels right to be contributing something proper to society. Like last night when I was pilfering from dumpsters I got to thinking – why sure I ain’t got an official uniform or road legal transport but heck, I’m as good as a binman. Don’t get shit all credit for that though do I?

Yeah, yeah yeah, I see you all there looking down at me thinking you got it so easy up there in your big bamboo tower. Well this job ain’t easy! Your world got rules, you know how the game is played, if you want to progress you can:

1. Sleep with your boss

2. Get your colleagues drunk, extract secrets from them and blackmail them.

3. Steal the good ideas of your coworkers and underlings and pass them off as your own.

We don’t have bosses so that’s out, well there is this one guy Bumhead who hangs out with the guys down the park where I’m drinking most days. He’s a little older than the rest of us, real bitchin’ vacant stare and a bushy ginger unkempt beard, we all sort of look up to him, he’s been at this game a long time so I guess he’s sort of a boss, but he’s basically always drunk and he doesn’t seem to have any secrets, he just mumbles vowels most of the time. I remember once although the memory is a little hazy from earlier cider consumption – he climbed up a tree and started to howl like a dog, but I don’t think he was revealing much but an apititude for method acting and arborism.

What can we do to get ahead? Don’t you think we have big dreams as well? I want to take my new career all the way, to the top 1% of unemployment – homelessness. Sure it won’t be easy, but I’ve got a loving family who would support me no matter what I did. So I’ve got to think up some real bad hare-brained scheme to make them give up on me. Look out ma, I’m a coming – hide your jewellery….

Now who feels stupid, wasting all that money on a “Business Studies” degree, fat lot of fucking good that did me, the only economy of scale(s) I see is when fat jim comes round with my pot. There’s no course you can do that prepares you for this job, oh no wait there is – Media Studies. But I didn’t do that, oh no wait I did, but just an AS level. Yeah of course with hindsight I should have carried on with it, got me a fancy PHP but back then I couldn’t see any future in it….

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