2008 #27 -- Ireland

Back from Ireland. As predicted didn't manage to write this yesterday. It would have been today anyway technically as I didn't hit Leicester until 3am after determination that I would sleep in my own bed, not on a couch, and have a full day off before returning to work. Woke up after only 6 hours of sleep feeling absolutely shattered, but fairly pleased with the last five days.

The details of the trip aren't that interesting to an outsider. To others a holiday like this would probably appear very dull, but all I can respond with would be; it worked for me.

It also got my mind back on to the track I want it on. The more time I spend away from my job the harder it feels to keep going back. If I think I'm still in any way enjoying my job, I'm flat out kidding myself. I'm not. It has become a drudge through sludge.

I need to separate the harsh realities that stop me in my tracks with finding alternatives to my current path from the pleasant realities of actually pursuing some of those alternatives. Step one absolutely MUST be to focus my free time on doing such a thing. This is not me promising not to relax and watch TV completely. It's more me saying that I absolutely MUST figure out what I want to spend the next part of my life doing. There is a point where sitting and thinking stops being useful, and that point is a dot in the rear view mirror.

Right now the sound engineering stuff is rattling around my conciousness more than anything else. If the idea is to "do", then this is what I shall do. I have material developing that I'd like to record, and old material I'd like to rerecord. I do need to spend a little more money to get the recording setup back into a useful state after effectively stripping out the speakers for my living room. They were about the worst type of speaker for mixing anyway. Active monitors will hopefully improve things.

Enough rambling about Ireland and dreams. Roll on Cornwall in a few weeks time (hopefully). Time to review the goals that I have largely ignored for a week and see how bad it can look:

1. I have eaten a lot of food. Very little of it was takeaway, but some of it was, and almost all of it was plus size portioned. Perhaps not unavoidable, but hard to get away from when on holiday with other people. I'll do better this week.

2. I have been largely offline all week, so poker hasn't factored. Goal met.

3. I took a couple of rolls (old terminology) in Dublin, which means I met this goal too.

4. I went away with three of my closest friends. Even met some new people over the course of more than one evening. What's going on here?

5. Strangely I even feel that I met the musical goal, as I spent time listening to the rough cuts, learning from them, and also discussed some guitar technicalities. Two hours may be a stretch, but the week wasn't a dead loss, and the time away always inspires a return to music. This is perhaps why I feel this is the direction to pursue.

6. Maybe there are work goals now. How would I know? I wasn't there most of the week. At the time of leaving, there were still none.

7. A very thoughtful five or six days with some ideas as discussed above. Goal met.

8. I didn't manage any of my normal exercise routine. I rationalised myself out of swimming worried I was going to make myself ill before going away. Bad. There wasn't really time to get to anything else. That said, I did a fair bit of walking around in Ireland, so it's not all bad.

All in all this looks better than I had expected.

What else did I get out of my trip? A desire to meet people. New friends, women. It seemed easier in a strange town, although I did have a guy around to push me, which I don't normally any more, which is a shame. I mentioned to him that I need to find a new wingman, but we agreed there weren't any obvious choices in my circle at the moment. Another problem to solve.

If you want to know about Dublin from my perspective, here are the headlines:


- You will be hit once by the value of the euro, and again by the London like price gouging throughout your time there. It's quite expensive, escpecially to eat and drink.
- The castle isn't worth looking at any more than the cathedral.
- It's a great place to just wander around and soak up.
- Nearby coastal areas are all largely the same. The sea barely moves on this coast.
- If you want a touristy trip, visit the tourist office. We didn't, and perhaps we should have. I'm just fortunate that I prefer disorder and disarray.
- If you think you don't get travel sick, you might be taken by surprise this time, but the good news is that the pills to counter travel sickness actually work!

Ok thats quite enough of me for today.