My Worst Year for Blogging

...So far, at least...

I'm not quite sure what's causing it, but I really haven't been inclined to document any of the cool stuff I've been doing so far this year - not even the visits to the cinema for such wonders as The Avengers: Age of Ultron (pretty good, but with a few plot holes... though it may simply be that I missed some important information in there somewhere). Nor have I been wittering on about the telly I've been watching (Gotham: going a bit crazy with the source material and going rather too far with some characters - notably Gordon's 'compromises' and Bruce's investigations - but Sean Pertwee and Jada Pinkett-Smith are an absolute joy to watch, and really bring the show to life; Agents of SHIELD: still really enjoying it, and liking how it's tying in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe; oddities like Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) or the books I've been reading (recently finished the final book in Stephen Donaldson's The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant... and was slightly disappointed by its saccharine ending, which reminded me too much of the way the Lord of the Rings movies ended). Nor have I felt like writing up the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular, which my girlfriend and I attended last week (suffice it to say it was awesome, but felt too short, and the four Daleks, four Cybermen, four Silurians and assorted other monsters looked a bit lonely in the massive space of Wembley Arena).

I've been doing some blogging, just not here, and not as much as I'd like.

The most likely cause, at a guess, is that work is starting to seem a bit rubbish. I've mentioned before that the department head is... less than efficient and prone to 'pointing the finger' when things go wrong (pointing anywhere but herself, for preference) but, more and more, she's coming across as a plain old bully. None of her more extreme behaviour is directed at me or the older, male designer I work with - I suspect she knows all too well that neither of us would tolerate it, though she did recently give me a telling off (effectively) for taking on an entire block of work she'd divided between the team, because everyone other than me was busy - all of it is distributed, quite evenly, between our younger colleagues, one male, one female. The designer is accused of being inefficient, despite working more effectively than our boss ever does (the boss has needed the rest of us to muck in on her two magazines, on press day, for the last couple of months... neither of the other designers ever need help, and we can't figure out what the boss is doing with her time if she's not setting the magazines). My counterpart is told to work more on his own initiative, then villified for doing so. Neither quite have the confidence to pull her on it, or complain about it to what passes for HR in this very small company.

When I first started there, and fucked up the very first magazine I worked on, the MD took me aside and, having asked about the cause of the problem and been satisfied with my answer that "it was my fuck up, pure and simple" (OK, there were more details about the actual problem, why it happened, and how I now avoid it, but I see no reason to bore anyone with that), he asked me to tell him about my idea of the perfect working environment - based on my considerable experience - and how his company could achieve it. I still haven't passed on my thoughts because, more and more, I suspect a full report would have to be received as my resignation. The MD is part of the problem, because some of his behaviour means more of my boss's behaviour is tacitly approved or normalised. Another part of the problem seems to be that folks just aren't encouraged to solve problems on their own initiative... Quite the opposite, from what I hear. The weird thing is, he presents himself as completely amiable and, unlike our immediate manager, doesn't go in for finger-pointing when things go wrong (such as today, when it transpired that our printers had bound a 12-page booklet incorrectly, which is a real achievement... just not a good one).

I'm not yet sure what I want to do about this... Ideally, I'd present my 'findings', then leave if it seemed most likely that nothing was going to happen. Trouble is, this is looking like a terrible year to put myself out of a job without something else lined up first. The ongoing situation with my roof doesn't seem to be progressing (the landlord is already sounding doubtful that the roof will be renewed this year, despite his assurances last year that it would be done - he always cites money issues... but, having paid over-the-odds service charges several times now, I don't believe a word of it), so now all the leaseholders have banded together to fund a thorough investigation of the building's finances with a view to taking over management ourselves. While all this is going on, I need to renew my lease... and I've heard from one of the other leaseholders that the landlord is being very uncooperative. Unsurprising, given that we're looking into his 'management' of the service charges, but annoying nonetheless.

Life at home hasn't been plain sailing, with my girlfriend getting very stressed and depressed about her Open University degree, finding it difficult to study, and questioning the necessity of a degree (a question to which I cannot adequately respond, since I am uneducated beyond a mostly-failed attempt at A-Levels). Things have actually been going fairly well, from my point of view - she's working part time, volunteering part time and mostly coping with studies and assignments, albeit often with some reluctance because of the trouble she's had focussing, and her results have been improving steadily - but the exams coming in only a couple of weeks and a couple of recent disappointments (rejections from an internship and another paid job) have compounded the existing study stress. She assures me I'm helping and 'looking after' her, but I can't help but feel a bit useless as I don't seem to be making much difference.

I was actually quite surprised when, on the day we were due to head to the MCM London Comic Con (last Friday, that is) she did not reconsider her attendance, and even wore the blue ('TARDIS') dress she'd previously sworn she would not wear to a convention because she's still overweight. She did start to panic a little while we were there (even with ticket presales hovering around the 1/3 capacity mark, and occupying a larger space than usual, the event was very crowded... though not the sea of elbows it gets to be over the weekends), but a quick tea break outside the halls brought her stress levels down enough that we were able to go back in. She did also stress about "spending too much time" looking at certain stalls (cough cough jewellery cough) but, to be honest, her more meticulous approach to the event probably benefitted me in the long run. Normally, when I go to these events, I'm out by lunchtime, having glanced at everything and bought everything I want/... This time, we were there till after 5pm... and we didn't leave because we were bored, we left because we were very tired after a hard day's retail therapy.

In other news, there's another new addition to the household... And I'm hoping my girlfriend doesn't get jealous about this, but... there's another woman in my life...

My girlfriend hasn't even complained about Catwoman (behind right) yet, so I think I'm safe...

This is the utterly beautiful Square Enix/Play Arts Kai Variant Batgirl (now there's a mouthful!), which I bought online after the Comic Con because the Square Enix stand didn't have any in their little warehouse, and the few I saw around the show were (a) very much more expensive than SE's RRP of £55 and (b) sold out by the time I got back to them. It's an awesomely detailed figure... but it's possibly not as poseable as I'd hoped, and absolutely will not stand on its own. However, now I've got it, I'm half tempted to get a couple more in the series... And it's tempting to start a secondary blog to write about these oddities I keep picking up...