Lookee here! A post that's actually personal, and about my life, for a change!

I've had a mixed week so far.

Actually, not the week - let's start with last Thursday..

No. Let's even go back beyond that..

Around 6 weeks ago - a week prior to the 28th October, whenever that was - I met up with a guy "off the net" for a shag. I was quite excited about this - we'd been chasing each other online for almost a year but never managed to find time to meet up, due to our very different work hours...

Long story short, I've now been seeing him once/twice a week. I go all gooey whenever I'm around him, and life is just nicer when he's around. I've met some of his friends, he's met a few of mine..

Last Thursday I was in a terribly bad mood. I've been working looong hours, I hadn't had a chance to see anyone outside of work in about two weeks (aside from the foam party last friday, and seeing Glen (for such is the boi's name) on the weekends of course..). On Thursday, I was feeling terribly tired, lonely, grumpy, and generally wanting to curl into a ball and die.

I was scheduled to go to a vendor's christmas party, but I'd been at work past the time the party started, and I really wasn't in the mood. In desperation, I decided to call around all my friends to try to arrange to meet someone, anyone, that night. Eventually I found someone who was free and arranged to meet up with them..

*snip*

Anyway, a few other friends had heard from my phone calls how lonely I was feeling, so a group of us ended up heading to the city for dinner. I suggested one of the restaurants at which Glen works (for he is an executive chef in all but job title), as I know it's a nice venue, the steaks are cheap (but they're good - if they're not, I'll be delivering complaints to the chef by hand), the atmosphere is good.. so we headed there.

The night was great - it had been weeks since I'd seen so many friends together (ignoring, again the foam party - really, it doesn't count!), and it was nice to just relax with friends. Even Trent's bitchy little barbs just made me feel warm and loved :)

The absolute highlight of the night though was introducing Glen to my friends. I'm fairly sure I'd introduced him to anyone as my boyfriend.... it's the first time I've been able to do that for years. In fact, it's really the first time ever - at the time when I had previous relationships, I didn't have many other friendships happening, so I didn't really have anyone to introduce them to. Quite possibly this had a lot to do with why those relationships didn't quite work..

I was quite surprised to realise that I really did think of Glen as a boyfriend though. I hadn't been looking for one - the single life suited me fine - but.. well.. it's here now, and I'm not going to throw away treasure just because I hadn't been looking for it.

Friday night was the staff christmas party. Champagne flowed freely (although it wasn't fantastic champagne), as did the chocolate fountains, the dancing... and the fags, of course. I felt like I was on the scene - the music was scenelike (same songs, different (dare I say it - inferior) mixes to what I'm used to), and most of all, I recognised half the crowd as stonewall/arq regulars. I even ran into a few people I knew as friends-of-friends, but didn't know worked at the same company.. Anyone who knows me will know that all my previous staff christmas parties have been rather small dos, generally involving boats - this was quite different.

Saturday night I went clubbing. Originally, I'd assumed a certain group of people would be going to Stonewall and planned to spend time with them. At the last moment, I discovered they were actually going to Arq; I was briefly tempted to follow them, but I decided that my night was about me, and I'd go where I wanted to go because it's a place I like.

This turned out to be a good choice; I ended up meeting up with two people who I get to spend far less time with than I like. We also did some unusual things - we went up to Grumpies and had coffee, which was fantastic as we got to have a good chat and made some interesting discoveries about each other. We later went back to Stonies and stood laughing at the queens for a while, before we headed off around 2am.

This week at work has been mostly a downer; I've felt like I was drowning under a deluge of work. I've had a list of things-which-must-be-done-before-I-leave-work-today for the last week or two. Nothing has so far left that list, it's only been added to. Instead, I've had last-minute priority projects monopolising my time, with support work stealing what's left over.

My own appraisal of my own work has been rather negative; I've felt that I'm not getting anything accomplished, I'm not moving any projects forward, I'm not performing as I should. It's not that I haven't been working my arse off - but I've felt that I wasn't getting anything more done than a mouse running on a treadmill.

That perception changed today, for several reasons. Partially, it was because one particular urgent last-minute project stole all my time. This meant that I actually made some progress on something today - even though it was at the expense of everything else that I'm meant to be working on.

Partially, it was because I managed to compile a list of the things that are not getting worked on and mailed it to various people who manage my time. Nothing has come of this yet, but at least I'm not the only one aware of how badly these things are being stalled. It's not just my problem any more - if my boss/es feel that they need to be worked on before I'm going to be able to do it, they're now empowered to make sure that this happens.

Mostly though, it was from a very brief conversation with my boss. He told me that he feels I've been performing excellently, achieving much more than he'd expect of me. Apparently all the things that I have been doing - last-minute projects, support for dead load balancers etc - actually count for something.

It's amazing how good such a small piece of encouragement has cheered me up and changed my perception of my work...