Landscaping

Got woken up about two hours ago by the sound of a pneumatic drill being used pretty much on my doorstep. Looking out at the works now - drill still going every now and then - I cannot be sure whether they're widening the pavement, or just moving it about 6" inward in preparation to widen the road. Either way, they've got a whole bunch of bollards to move (or, as appears more likely right now, remove entirely).

On the 'inside' of the little sliproad outside the flat, they're certainly moving the kerb in by 6"... and also rotating the kerbstones so the shorter edge is up... But now they're completely breaking up the end of this little paved island... and, where they've finished digging and breaking and levelling out the earth underneath, they seem to have laid concrete up to about an inch from the rest of the pavement. Who knows what they'll do with it, but I have a ringside seat for whatever it is. I'm beginning to suspect a cycle path...

I've been very up-and-down this week... Not getting much of anything at all done. Nothing particularly useful, anyway.

Except even that's not true, I guess... I've 'completed' (that is to say, until I decide to make changes) another two t-shirt designs, and done a fair bit of photography. The light is pretty crummy at the moment, though, so it's unlikely I'll be doing much more today... having realised yesterday, by trawling through my Photobucket accounts, that there's a fair bit of old stuff I missed somehow. That, or I just lost the photos...

Anyway, point being, I really feel like the last few months have been a complete waste. I've been doing my usual thing of blythely assuming everything will come together, and not making any contingency plans. I'm still out of work, my skill set is out of date (again - just like when I left school), and, while part of me is desperate to get back into a bustling office environment, another (louder, typically) part of me is terrified at the prospect. I've spent most of the last 10 years being the hot-shit, go-to guy for everything... and in any normal, contemporary office environment (in my 'normal' line of work, that is) I'd be so far behind everyone else, I wonder if I'd be worth employing.

But how much of this is just my ingrained sense of worthlessness and inadequacy? I've always been able to learn quickly - if I'm sufficiently interested/motivated - and, when it comes to troubleshooting, much of my talent is innate, to the point where I cannot actually explain how I go about it... it just happens.

The other side to this trouble is that I'm still very much... uncertain... that I want to carry on in that line. Sure, it'd be great to hammer out the series of novels I have running around in my head, and never have to work again but, frankly, these last few months have been depressing because I've not been occupied with work (or much writing, because I can't focus). I can only keep myself busy so far (that said, I still haven't done the vaccuuming!) and, after that, I just go stir crazy. And if I don't want to carry on in my established career... what the hell do I want to do? What else could I do?

I know it's a circular argument, but it's one I keep returning to because I have no satisfactory answer.

More later... possibly...