Another year skulks by, like a half-acquaintance on the bus trying to avoid eye contact

Another year older, what have I learnt? I've learnt its takes about 3 years for a son to notice his father in the shadows of his Mother. This last couple of months I've really bonded with my youngest, the boy's coming on strong and I'm very proud of him, swimming without armbands at 3 years old. I've also learnt that love can be expressed in an extra squeezy hug, constant demands for me to finish levels on the DSi or even in an extra special meringue desert.

After a rather turbulent year, my last birthday being the closing date for voluntary redundancy applications and we are still undergoing restructures. I've learnt that loyalty and duty means very little in the corporate world. Actually I watched a film called, “Buried”, spoiler alert by the way! A man is buried, held hostage in Iraq, not a special ops man or super-spy just a contract truck driver, in one scene the company lawyer is on the phone to him, telling the man he was sacked that morning over some minor infringement and so his family won't get any insurance money if/when he inevitability dies. 5 years ago I would not have believe that a company would be so callous, today my reaction was “that's just bloody typical”. All I can say is they'll reap what they sow, I'm a firm believer in karma.

My next career move will most likely be to work for myself, what's that saying “no boss, no loss”. I have plans, well more in the way of pipe dreams right now, but every journey has beginning. I'd like to do work I'm proud of, feel I'm actually achieving something worthy, rather than just working to pay the mortgage. I'm reminded of Douglas Adam's Little green pieces of paper comments.

 

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this, at a distance of roughly ninety million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, whose ape descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy.

And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans. 

From the radio script for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the late, great Douglas Adams: 

Anyway whatever I do, wherever I go, when I look at my kids, I know I've done something right.