signs

Things have felt a little overwhelming today. But I have a three-day week followed by a four-day weekend, my schedule is nicely busy without being overcrowded, and I have a chocolate caterpillar that I don't intend to share with anyone. If any signs were to point to a less confusing time ahead, these would be those signs.

missing

For a year and a half, the most important thing in my life was dance. I went to any and every dance class or social I got a sniff of, and as many festivals as I could afford (and some I couldn't). All of my friends were dancers, and I went to everything, dance-related or not, that they invited me to. It was my life's infrastructure. Well, I'm never free on Tuesdays or Thursdays, probably not Wednesdays either. Last Friday of every month is out. Second Sunday of every month is out. I don't know how healthy or sensible that was, but I was busy and happy and had no desire for change.

I've lost that recently. I went for well over a year without missing a single one of my Tuesday classes, and now I go to maybe half, if that. I haven't been to Thursday classes in months. I go to socials infrequently, and usually leave early. I sold my ticket for the one festival I was planning to go to. It's even hard to enjoy stupid bouncy dancing in my bedroom at the moment. I don't quite know how to cope without that, because it's one of my default comfort behaviours and has been since I was a kid, but dancing just isn't fun anymore.

Maybe it's the dance. I've got stuck. In terms of steps and moves, there's not a huge amount more I can learn, and in terms of technique, I've been learning from the same (excellent) teachers for two years, and if they haven't been able to explain it to me by now I'm probably not going to get it from them. Maybe I'm bored of the moves and the music and it's draining my love for dance as a whole.

Maybe it's the scene. Where we once had a group of people learning stuff and having fun, we now have competitions and auditions and troupes and teachers in training. People practise and rehearse rather than dance. Teachers pick favourites and don't know how to hide it. Friends and acquaintances have long, detailed conversations in which they try to pin down their exact dance level in relation to other people we know, and discuss dance like it's our profession, not our hobby. Maybe that's been sucking all the fun out of it.

Maybe it's my body. I'm frustrated at my limitations, limitations other people don't seem to have because they came into this dance with years of learning technique in a different discipline, rather than what I did, which was just show up to a class after spending the vast majority of my adult life sitting on my arse thinking about aubergines. I'm analysing every move I make, trying to persuade myself to take up other dances to get this technique stuff and make my dancing look prettier, so maybe I'm sucking all the fun out of it.

Maybe it's my priorities. When I started dancing I had a dying relationship, almost no friends in the city, and an ache for interaction that had been growing for years. Two years later I have a very healthy relationship and friends that I believe I would keep even if I never danced another step again, so maybe the need is gone. Maybe I never really loved dance as much as I thought I did.

Maybe it's my head. Anxiety is getting in the way of a lot of things right now. Maybe that's all this is, and when I learn how to control it, dancing will be fun again.

It might be any, or all, of these things. There isn't really a fix for any of them, at least not within my power right now, which leaves me without a passion acting as the driver for my life. I'm not good at handling life without that driver. For some reason I can't drive it myself, so it either goes careening off into some bushes or I freak out and stop the whole thing. I wrote in November about needing a new thing, and I've tried several since then. I've enjoyed them all enough to keep going with them; I have made an improbable number of cushion covers this month. But none of them have gripped me in the way I'm looking for. I think about what I've done and where I could go next - dressmaking! Kickboxing belts! - and I don't feel enthused, just scared and a bit sad.

There's something missing. I've tried to fill the empty place but it doesn't want to be filled. Is that because my love of dance will come back, somehow, and doesn't want anything else to crowd it out, or is this a bigger problem? I don't know. Either way, it kind of hurts.

A Statute for those who are born in Parts beyond the Sea

For some reason I've been given access to a fancy legal database, and rather than take the opportunity to learn anything I just started searching it for things with funny names. 13th Century statutes and people called Oozageer and remarkably improbable neighbourhood disputes. I expect to have fun next week.

blue

My laptop is dying. It's been dying very slowly for a good few years now. First it decided it didn't like sharing WiFi with other laptops and would freeze or shut itself off after two minutes online (I've never found out why this is, it's done it on a dozen different private networks). Then the screen died and I had to get an internal part replaced. Then it died entirely and a nerd magicked it back to life. Then the power cord died. Then the screen started going black when tilted at certain angles. Then all the white space stopped being white at all but two very specific and precise angles of the screen, one of which only exists fifty per cent of the time and the other of which requires the laptop to be practically shut. I haven't replaced it, because it turns out laptops are bastard expensive.

My boyfriend has been offering for months to lend me his old laptop. Which is a Mac.

Me: But I don't get Macs. There aren't any buttons and you scroll the wrong way and dragging and dropping is impossible.
Him: It's fine. They're just computers. They're very easy to use once you get used to the couple of differences.

He scrubbed all his stuff off the old Mac and gave it to me yesterday. Today I tried to do some work on it. Tried.

Me: Uh... help.
Him: What's up?
Me: It went blue.
Him: Huh?
Me: I tried to save it and it went blue.
Him: It went blue?
Me: And all the words have gone.

[he investigates laptop]

Him: Yep, that's gone blue. I've no idea what you did there.
Me: I thought you said Macs were easy to use.
Him: Oh, fuck off.

advice

I used to make my living giving advice over the phone. My knowledge of the law was, and is, pretty solid. During my years on the phone, I dealt with the lot of the same quite specific problems on a regular basis. Below is an example of a conversation I had more than once with various callers, who were usually owners or HR managers of a company.

Caller: So in the office/on site/at the staff party, Person X punched Person Y in the face.
Me: What have you done so far?
Caller: We've suspended Person X. We're not sure what to do now.
Me: [explains disciplinary procedures]
Caller: Can we sack him?
Me: Generally speaking, it's considered to be within the range of reasonable responses to treat assaulting a colleague as gross misconduct.

This even happened once:

Caller: But some of our clients really like Person X, and I don't think they'd be too happy if we sacked him.
Me: You aren't obliged to sack him. But it may be worth bearing in mind that you have a duty of care to all your employees, and it's possible that being obliged to continue to work with someone who punched him in the face may lead Person Y to consider submitting a grievance or even potentially claiming constructive dismissal.

(Yes, I talked like this. I still do if you ask me this kind of question.)

I believe that sacking Person X when he punches Person Y in the face is a very reasonable thing to do, and this belief does not change one bit if that person is Jeremy Clarkson. You don't get to punch someone in the face at work and continue working there, unless you're trying to stop them committing an act of mass destruction or you work as a boxer or something. Being good at your job or popular with a lot of customers (whatever your opinion on Clarkson, he is clearly both those things) isn't and shouldn't be enough to give you leave to punch people in the face.

This has been your employment law update for March. Thank you.

new office analysis

New office pros:

It has been officially certified as Not Falling Down
It is currently proudly displaying a Union Jack-painted washing machine in its reception, which is hilarious.
The doors are just normal doors and don't randomly malfunction and lock everyone in or out.
We are allowed ACTUAL BINS here. This is such a stupid thing to be happy about, but I might be happier about this than anything else. Why would you take all the bins, previous office? Why?
There is WiFi and a quiet room, and I have been given to understand that there is a free gym for general staff use.
Everybody is in such a state over the sudden move that they keep buying and passing out doughnuts for no real reason. I approve of this.


New office cons:

I am in a basement. Not just any basement. An Emergency Basement.
It is a little-used and therefore rather smelly Emergency Basement.
There is music leaking in from the post room all day, not loud enough to listen to but not quiet enough to ignore. It's about 95% terrible, which is sort of worse than if it was all terrible because the 5% keeps getting my hopes up.
The building is weird and twisty and non-signposted, so I have absolutely no idea where I am, how I got here, or how to get back out again.
The nearest "tea point" has no way of a) heating water or b) storing milk.
In lieu of security doors, they have rather scary security guards all over the place. Because of said security guards, I have to actually wear my security pass, with its picture of Scary Wonky Radioactive Oompa-Loompa Jen, at all times.
It really does smell quite bad. This bears repeating.

Sunday, expanded

Birthday month may be over but other people are still continuing to get older, and yesterday was my boyfriend's birthday. For various reasons I made most of his presents. I made him cushions (three. I got carried away), one of which had a picture of his face on it.

Him: [staring at cushion and laughing his head off] That's terrifying.
Me: I know.
Him: I love it. It's terrifying.
Me: I know it is. It's been sitting in my room just looking at me for several days.
Him: I sort of feel like I should leave it here.
Me: No way. You having a cushion with your face on it is funny. Me having a cushion with your face on it would just be creepy.

I also made him a cake shaped like a fruit market, because I miss when I used to make people cakes shaped like ridiculous things all the time. Presenting people with tanks and race tracks and beans on toast and pianos and snakes and Christopher Walken sat navs was fun; the recipient usually knew I made stupid cakes and was probably even expecting one, but they still wouldn't know quite what to say when they saw it.

We went for dinner. It was by far the most expensive dinner I've ever had in my life. If it had been half the cost it still would have been the most expensive dinner I'd ever had in my life by some way. I've never done fancy food and I don't really understand it, but it was what he wanted to do for his birthday, so off we went. I dressed head-to-toe 1920s and felt very pleased with myself. We had eight courses (plus a cheese board), all of which were very tasty. At least six of them I wouldn't have gone near a year or two ago. I feel like I'm growing. It was amazing food, and I do understand why it's a thing now, but I still can't get my head round choosing to spend that much money on one meal. But that's OK, it's his thing. It doesn't have to be mine.

(Also we had matched wine with the whole thing, plus some champagne, and I have not been my brightest and sparkliest today.)

Tomorrow I go to my new office. I am nervous, and not the good kind of nervous.