It's been awhile since I sat down for a drink. A fair bit has been going on. I'm 9 months into the first serious relationship of my adult life after being intentionally single for quite a few years. It's nice, feels surprisingly natural. We get on well and balance each other out, finding ways to help each other grow. And we're quite balanced in long-term life plans: not favouring casual relationships, no desire for kids, indifferent to marriage... It's an adventure I'm enjoying and learning a great deal from. The last few months has also seen me learning to drive and I passed my test a couple of weeks back with 0 faults. Now I just need to find a car. A large part of the motive was so I could be more self-sufficient with getting out to kayak. I want to get some coaching qualifications and help out at the club, especially with coaching people who are held back by their mental game. That's an area I think I can bring valuable experience and learnings to. It's also nice to be able to help out driving in the relationship. Progress on the album release is slow but still moving. I have officially finished all the shortlisted tracks and the label are now deciding the final track-list. Some tracks will inevitably get cut as they want it to all fit on one vinyl, but we should be able to release the spares as digital promo EPs. Exciting times. I've got a fair few friends in various creative industries, so we have some cool plans cooking on how to present and promote the release. B2B sales is hard. The marketing I've been managing for family the IT business has gotten us a fair few leads now for our flagship product, but we just can't get anyone over the line. It's not like B2C where if you can just convince someone to click 'buy' for a second then it's job done. With businesses there's multiple layers of approval, contracts, security questionnaires and all this other random shit. I think we might have to change which product we push the hardest, as the current approach is just not viable for much longer.
I have gotten super into tennis. I have my first match in two weeks. Then I plan to join a league. I also took my first ever Krav Maga class last night. It was amazing. I really liked it a lot. I’m sore today but left the place feeling more alive than I have in years.
I'm super fucking grumpy this week. Been told by a couple of people that "we're not a match" so I've deleted all dating apps/profiles and have eliminated that distraction for now to focus on my training & fitness. That said, this atmospheric river is bringing damn near 4 inches of rain to a park I'm supposed to be running a 50k in on Saturday, so I'm bailing on that... Work...me and my team are getting moved out of R&D and into a different department. I've had zero say in this matter, but it's happening! Bringing me to my 4th manager in 15 months, and an endless cycle of relationship management, and redoing team strategy and resource planning depending on what the new manager needs/wants. So, I'm wondering if I want to keep going through this because really? It's super hard to truly be effective and get shit done with the constant re-orgs. Taking a semi-serious look at what other jobs are out there.
Turns out that I have an option to take classes and seminars at pretty much any division, and the process is only one step removed from student registration. I also got registered for the central library access as research worker, which means the ability to loan books from everywhere in the city. This leads to idiotic situations. Like when (as a student) I had to jump through hoops to borrow each volume of Durant individually, but now, thanks to the powers of loose affiliation, I could hog the whole set for 18 months and nobody can say no. I guess this explains why so many books are hanging on long-term accounts: academic spite.
I realized when I had to get my license renewed, I've been legally allowed to drive for more than half my life now, since 15, now I'm 32. Feels strange. Illegally, I'd been driving vehicles around the farm when I was 13.. But nobody needs to know about that. 13 year old Foveaux, with a full head of hair and an unruly smile, blasting around the paddocks in 1st gear because 2nd and 3rd were for the big leagues. I think I managed to get the old radio working on that heap of junk and I rode that high for a few weeks. I'm feeling quite nostalgic, so I found the farm on maps. https://www.google.com/maps/@-46.0925755,169.5164439,3a,75y,100.58h,93.25t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCcuEmnqPpFQle4aA16-kSA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en That paddock full of cows was where I would start my journey, and I'd head on down through the gates towards the river, away from prying eyes, then practice my sweet donuts. The house across the road was where I grew up, but I couldn't tell you who lives there now. Likely 3 or 4 families have come and gone. That house was where Dad taught me to use the lawnmower, and promptly setup shop with a beer to 'supervise'. Anyway! A really good staff member handed in her resignation yesterday. It was expected, because I gave her a glowing reference and we went out for a drink when she got the offer. Still, it sucks to lose someone good - but she is going to much better and well paid things, so onward! I passed the resignation on to my manager, who processes it with HR, and I advised her not to tell the department as the staff member wanted to let them know herself, in person. Manager announced it in a meeting this morning, and everyone in the department was blindsided. Good times.