life – Page 9 – Wild Rain

A mental base of operations

I’ve learned to create a “mental base of operations”.

Sounds weird but they a places where you can create a makeshift office or space to sort stuff out, get stuff done. A coffee shop, a desk in a corner somewhere, a cheap hotel room. Somewhere where you can relax and get into your own headspace for a period of time so you can focus on what needs sorting.

A place where you know you have half an hour, an hour, or maybe two, where you can just focus and get stuff done.

I worked a contract at a University once working on planning a strategy. When I arrived they had no desk or place for me to work. My office was mobile, all in my backpack. I just needed Wi-Fi and power. I found a quiet desk in the University library. I worked from there for the best part of a week. I was on-site and available for meetings and when I wasn’t in a face-to-face meeting I was in my mental base of operations: a quiet library.

I’ve written articles in coffee shops, an eBook in a hospital cafe, written reports in libraries and spare rooms. I’m writing this post in a gym waiting area. All you need is a little space for a short period of time to just focus and get stuff done.

Private car parks

Private car parks can be a nightmare. You pull into an area you don’t know, needing to park, and before you know it you have driven into a private car park.

The first indication is the signs on posts. Usually badly lit. In the UK there is an unwritten rule that if you find yourself in a private car park you have five minutes to pay or get out. This rule is currently being debated as the fines for not paying within five minutes can be as much as a second hand car!

Personally, I’ve had to go through the dispute process on several occasions. On one occasion there were no spaces and I offered to submit my dashcam recordings as evidence. On another they only accepted digital payments by app and I had no phone signal to download it. Again I had dashcam evidence to prove that as soon as I realised this I attempted to leave but was stuck in a queue for the exit.

If you don’t have a dashcam then it’s your word against theirs. If you know that you are in the right you can always ask them to prove a negative. Prove that you were not in a queue trying to get out of the car park minutes after entering. Prove that there was adequate phone signal at that time for your network.

These private car park companies have gotten the art of sending out legal-looking fines and threatening wording down to a fine art. Plus they will offer a discount if you pay faster, nevermind the fact that you shouldn’t be paying anything at all.

It’s gotten to the point where I hate parking. If I have to park somewhere I try to do my research beforehand to know where I can park safely, either for free or in a local authority run car park.

The world around and in you

There are many different ways of looking at the world. All come from within. Your perceptions and how you interpret and react to the world around you determines how you view it and your enjoyment of it.

There’s an example I like to use to illustrate this based on two people I met on my travels.

The first was a lady I met in New Zealand. She was on a package holiday whereas I was winging it going in whatever direction I felt next. We ran into each other on a Maori farm on the north island in an area known as the bay of plenty.

She told me that she had broken her (non dominant) wrist in a sporting accident and couldn’t wait to get home. She was going through the motions living each remaining day of her holiday but enjoying none of it. She hated this country, the people, the food, everything. She just wanted to get back home.

This wasn’t how she had felt before the accident, she was having the time of her life. That all changed however since the accident.

The second was a young man I met in a youth hostel in Sydney Australia. He was on the phone to his mum when we met. She was crying. Afterwards he explained how he and his mates came out here, bought a cheap van, surfboards, and the gear they needed and just travelled the coast surfing and partying. Then that very morning someone had stolen the van and all his possessions including his passport. He told me that everyone couldn’t have been more helpful and he has papers to get back home. He was as happy as can be. “I loved every minute dude” he told me. “It’s been a blast, an amazing holiday”. “Ok so all my stuff is gone and all my photos but they can’t take what’s up here” he said pointing to his head. His mum was upset for him but this guy was so chilled.

Both fellow travellers had suffered a major setback, a traumatic event. Yet while the first had chosen to view everything negatively, the second had chosen the opposite, to remember the fun times. After all it’s just stuff and that can be replaced. He did not let life get him down and he was a better person because of it.

Only you can control how the world around you affects you.

Why Wild Rain

Thoughts and ideas swirl around in my head constantly. I can’t seem to turn it off. I’ve tried meditation, going for long walks, and just listening to music. Yet the noise in my head is ever present, like a wild rain.

I discovered that journaling was a great way to clear my mind. The very act of writing down my thoughts and ideas would instantly bring relief. It felt like an overflowing water butt leaking from the lid and then someone opened up the tap to fill a watering can. The purpose of the butt being realised: to collect and dispense rain water. The pressure relieved.

Wild Rain is my digital journal of thoughts and ideas that swirl around in my head before being poured into this digital repository for me to play with, edit, refine and then.. forget. Returning only when the pressure builds up again.

I’ve learned that if you leave too many thoughts and ideas in your head for too long then new ones don’t happen. It’s like your brain is waiting for you to action them. Saying “Hey I thought of these great ideas, now it’s over to you to do something with them”. Writing them down feels like they’ve been addressed, now the brain is free to think about something new. Content in the knowledge that whatever it thinks about will be processed later.

Retirement is wasted on the old

What would you do if you didn’t need money?

Think about that for a moment. Most of what we do each day is dictated by money. Going to work, shopping, holidays, going for a drive, eating out, etc etc.

If money was no longer an issue, what would you do?

Travel the world, visit family and friends more, write a book just for fun, learn to paint, get fit, sleep more, spend more time in the garden.

I’ve been hanging out with a few retired friends recently and they had faced this very question. They no longer needed to work. They either reached retirement age and had enough saved, or they inherited money or sold a business and decided they were done working for money.

So what did they end up doing?

One learned to paint and spent more time in his garden, joining a few clubs such as a book club, mahjong and scrabble, and a dining club. Another tinkers with old cars in his garage and buys stuff that he couldn’t afford when they were younger just to tinker with or display for no one but themselves to see. Another travels and writes about their adventures.

Thinking about it, there is nothing stopping us non retirees from doing any of this. We can travel, paint, garden, tinker. Why put something off til the tail-end of your life? I mean, there’s no guarantee that you will get there so why put the fun stuff off? Why not have mini retirements? Save up and take breaks throughout your career. Six months here, a year there, and so on.

Retirement is wasted on the old.

Make a list of what you would do if you could and start doing them now.

Big faceless organisations

I miss the days before the internet sometimes. Especially when dealing with companies. They think they are being efficient dealing with customers only through the web or an app, using AI agents to deal with enquiries and having complex digital complaints procedures.

Once they have your money and you experience problems with their product or service, good luck reaching an actual human to talk to. Or getting your money back.

If you are an IT geek though you might have a chance. I’ve managed to talk to humans and get my money back on several occasions, but it took a bunch of skills that the average person just doesn’t have such as:

– Understanding how web pages work and reading the page source
– OSINT
– How to hack AI
– Side-channels
– Exploiting software bugs

It shouldn’t require a degree in IT in order to get decent customer service but that’s been my experience.

Lists 2.0

I’m a big fan of lists. To do lists, checklists, packing lists, you name it I’ve turned it into a list. I recently learned that ChatGPT is great at lists.

Very detailed lists.

Need to plan a vacation? It will generate a list of things you need to take into consideration, in addition to what to pack. Shopping for a new laptop, car, or even a house? It can quickly knock you up a list with indented bullet-points on everything you need. Need to make a plan should a disaster occur, maybe a nuclear war or zombie outbreak? Yep it will create a detailed survival plan complete with supplies list in seconds.

Lists 2.0: create your unique custom lists with AI!

Online job hunting in 2024

Looking for work online, especially in the IT industry is pretty brutal in 2024. Assuming you do find roles that match your criteria, over 100 applicants have probably already applied. Using tried and tested techniques you tailor your CV and cover letter to the job description in the hope of moving to the front of the pile. Fingers crossed!

You hear nothing.

LinkedIn will usually provide information on the agent advertising the role along the lines of “This person generally responds within X number of days”. Yet they never do. You hear nothing despite all the time you took to research the role and craft your application.

It’s not rudeness, it’s a combination of inefficiency, a lack of automation, and unprofessionalism. Don’t take it personally. Assuming the job is real (more on that later) chances are that there were too many applicants and the agent did not have enough time to respond to all. Automation would help here, but not many agents use it, or use it well. Then there’s the unprofessionalism. A lot of agents are young, college graduates, or fell into the role after their intended career path didn’t lead them where they wanted. Recruitment is not their passion. Don’t bother remembering their names, next month they’ll be doing something else. The recruitment sector has a high turnover rate. Combined with mad incentive schemes and recruitment targets it’s all just a fast-paced game that many fail, and you, unfortunately, are just a pawn on the board.

Then there’s the jobs that don’t exist. Or might, possibly, in the future. Some recruiters like to predict market trends and monitor local news to guess who may be hiring and what kind of jobs. So they create fake job profiles to bring in candidates so that they are ready to go should the roles actually materialise. Most don’t and your data has now been harvested into a recruiter database.

You did read the terms right?

Chances are they may put you forward for roles without your permission just to prevent other recruiters from doing the same. It may be worth requesting your data be removed from recruiters that have not successfully sourced you a role. They may even sell your data on. Or if they are swallowed up by a bigger firm your data may be merged into another database that you did not consent to.

Between being ghosted, ignored, and harvested, you may become somewhat depressed. Don’t be. Its just a game and unfortunately in 2024 it’s brutal. But there are ways of taking back control, one of which is to become your own agent. One with a single candidate: you.

Look for potential employers or clients yourself. Tap your network for leads. Promote your candidate at every opportunity. Sell sell sell!

Go give it a try. You might find it fun. You’ll definitely learn what it’s like to be a recruiter, and about self promotion. Just don’t take being ignored, rejection, or being ghosted personally. It’s just a game.

See you in 2025!

Merry Christmas

I miss the Christmas I enjoyed as a kid.

To me it was all about family and being together. It wasn’t about decorations, lights, food, toys and gifts. It wasn’t commercial. I would probably be happy with a lump of (smokeless) coal. As long as my family was there and we were all healthy and happy.

Forget the handing out of (wish)lists and Amazon vouchers. Forget having to deal with packed town centers and inflated prices. Forget having to pay for packs of over-priced postal stamps.

A mince pie by an open fire. Playing family games and forgetting to watch the royal speech. Marking everything you intend to watch in the only copy of the Radio Times you’ll buy this year and then promptly forgetting to watch anything as planned. Having a drink or two after the kids have all gone to bed as the embers die down in the open fire and the Christmas tree lights twinkle. Remembering all the good things that happened this past year whilst ignoring the bad. Making resolutions.

So that’s the Christmas I intend to enjoy this year.

Merry Christmas all!