Work

Although the lights have been on around town for a while now, only now with the office Christmas party a few days away has any sense of good cheer begun to rear its head. In addition to the bunting everywhere (and our very own special office Christmas tree), the subject of Christmas plans has now seeped into our coffee machine conversations, as has the buzz around the office secret Santa reveal. The Christmas party is definitely a highlight of the season, not least for the special costumes a certain someone breaks out year after year and the alcohol enabled banter which in my view tends to reveal the inner workings of peoples minds more often than not. On a personal note, I am looking forward to catching up with a couple of friends of mine ahead of Thursday, which means I’ll be out everyday from Tuesday till Friday when I hop on my flight down south to formally kick off my period of unplugging. ...

For Day 8 of the AoM 31 Day Journaling Challenge: Reflect on Your Career. – Work for me has focused on materials, particularly ferrous ones, and how they perform in a variety of oil and gas environments, on two continents; Africa of my birth and Europe where I have spent the last few years. My journey began in December of 2003 with being hired straight out of University in 2003 as a trainee engineer through progressing via a number of roles in various aspects of the corrosion and materials discipline and eventually leaving in October of 2008, thanks to a mixture of burn out and the opportunity to return to the university for graduate studies. Since graduating in July of 2009, I’ve gotten back into the Corrosion & Materials field first with a service provider and latterly with an oil & gas production company where I am Corrosion & Materials Technical Authority. ...

After the sun, for the Day 19 prompt. --- A lone man stands in front of the bus shelter, his bag slung across his shoulder, hands stuck deep in his pockets, staring out towards the square, at the space where the bus should be.Behind him, four bicycles lie in various states of harness. Before him, the square liessuffused with light. The calm, strange for this time of the day, is broken when as though dumped from an arriving train, a flood of people begins to traverse the square. After that comes the rain, after which it becomes clear that the quiet that came before was only the calm before the storm. Alone, his bag slung across his shoulder he stares. The square lies suffused with light. Calm, strange day. Then the rain.

Photo by Zen Photographer on Unsplash – Eat-sleep-work-walk; wash-rinse-repeat. This just about sums up the past six weeks for me, travel down south being one of the few brights spots in an otherwise humdrum existence. In that state the days blur into each other - the weekend when it comes offering scant relief - before being quickly subsumed by a new Monday morning and the start of a new cycle of drudgery. It is that time of the year when the final reports from last year are being reviewed and finishing touches made to the detailed plans for the new year’s work so there is little scope for escape. ...

Bang on time for the start of spring, the trees behind my house have sprouted flowers; a welcome change from the bare, gaunt visage which has greeted my eyes over the last few months. In its place is a splash of colour - bright pink - which is always welcome in our neck of the woods, known more for the ubiquity of grey granite and grey weather than anything else. ...

Somewhat fortuitously I stumbled on a podcast by Redeemer Presbyterian’s Tim Keller, Four Ways the Gospel Transforms Work. It was one which, by including the subject of work and identity, took me one back to a couple of years ago when I reflected on the subject of being and identity. Tim’s four points - not making work our identity, considering all work dignified because God does it through us, sticking to the moral compass of our worldview and not letting work become our master - provide a detailed ...

Source There is a lot I enjoy about my work, not least being a purveyor of the somewhat esoteric knowledge of materials and how they perform in a variety of service environments. Most of the time I am advising, providing insights into what types of degradation can occur, how likely it is to progress and what actions we should be taking to assure ourselves of the future integrity of the kit we look after. ...

The quietness of Old haunts, to which one returns. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Life

Sometime ago, not without some misgivings I must add, I moved desks at work, all part of the new re-stacking policy designed around optimising our use of space. Following the move, I went from a desk which looked on into the central corridor with my computer facing away from the door to one where my view was the bus station across the road. The view was decidedly an upgrade, what came with it though was a sense of being blinded to people milling about behind me and coming in to meet me, particularly on the occasions when I have my head phones plugged in to maximise my concentration. ...

It feels like only like yesterday when the prospect of free Fridays had me all excited, wondering what I would do with myself. Somehow, nine Fridays have come and gone since then, with proper 5 day work weeks left to look forward to till the offices shut for Christmas in late December. These Summer Fridays were especially important to me being the very first ones I was entitled to, even though I had worked in the same team for almost five years. ...