I love really long emails in which colleagues explain why they haven’t got the time to do the work they could have completed in the time it took to write the email.
Ah, the kids have diagnosed me: the reason for the sickness that has consumed me since my return from Bath on Sunday afternoon.
“It’s because you never go out,” they tell me, “so your immune system can’t cope with mixing with people suddenly.”
Could be. Or it could be just poor decisions consuming too much caffeine in an attempt to stay awake there and back.
Or mixing with my brother, just off a flight from Southeast Asia. Or spending too long in a crowded restaurant. Or stuffing myself with three courses far richer than I’m used to.
Who knows? Maybe I’m just allergic to half-term and will miraculously be cured as soon as the kids return to school. Let’s hope so. This sickness is quite awful.
I suppose it is reassuring that my sister — who is vastly more qualified than I and levels above me on the career ladder — also hates her job. In fact, she pointedly observed, everyone in their forties hates their job. There is no greener on the other side. Everyone has reached the plateau of this is as good as it gets. So better just get used to it, and find a new interest outside the nine to five.
It doesn’t escape me that family members occasionally like taking subtle digs at my beliefs and practices whenever we get together. I don’t let it bother me, though, because if they had any deep knowledge of their own religious tradition, they would quickly realise that they’re in fact mocking sacred precepts of their own. In truth, I am merely preserving all that we have forgotten. That is what this way is: a reminder and renewal.
A bad coffee is the perfect way to spoil a good dinner. Eighteen hours on, and my innards still feel pickled.
I remember my lectures on the politics of the Middle East intimately.
This was a popular course, so our room in the Brunei Gallery would be packed.
I’d sit somewhere near the back, for I was completely disengaged.
While everyone around me would be taking copious notes, my pad of paper would fill with doodles of cars.
Why do I remember that now? Because, here I am at my desk doing exactly the same.
I have two monitors in front of me. A code editor on that screen. A presentation over there.
But my fingers have left my keyboard and mouse. Instead, I’m scribbling pictures of sports cars on a scrap of paper with a biro.
I cannot focus at all. It’s at this point that it occurs to me that I need help.
A dawning realisation, possibly thirty years too late.
I have bad, unproductive weeks all too frequently.
I feel guilty for being so easily distracted, but evidently, that guilt has no impact on my ability to focus.
At the start of the week, I’ll be telling myself I’ll need to make up all of my unproductive hours, but by the end, I realise it’s a lost cause.
If I am feeling charitable to myself, I will recall all of those colleagues taking long-term sick leave on full pay for their own psychological burdens.
At least I am at work, I console myself, offering something back to my organisation and the people we serve.
But these positive vibes are short-lived because I know I will ultimately be held to account for these days worked, with little to show for the compensation I receive.
It’s true that there’s a growing realisation that my behaviour is intimately linked to executive function: that I have cognitive deficits impacting every aspect of my life.
But that’s not much consolation. It doesn’t offer me a way out or an excuse. It’s just an explanation.
All that remains is that futile hope I’ll be able to cram twenty hours of work into Friday. High hopes indeed.
This afternoon, I thought I finally had a real-world task for Copilot. A favour for a colleague.
I loaded up a data table and asked Copilot to turn it into an organisation chart for me.
Could it do it? Not on your nelly. Well, maybe that’s premature.
It’s thinking about it. And it has been thinking about it for ages. “Please wait a moment while I process this.”
In that very long moment, I fired up PowerPoint and inserted a SmartArt chart all by myself.
I expect I will be finished long before this clumsy AI model comes up with the goods.
Tomorrow, I will be passing my license onto someone more needy than I.
For me, this tool is absolutely useless. Maybe a non-techie will be more forgiving.
Hey kids, sorry to be a party pooper, but the place for racing is Silverstone on track day, not our narrow urban streets night after night. Go home before you kill someone. It’s all fun until it’s not.
Shock, horror, I may be becoming an AI convert. Not Microsoft Copilot, which I still find next to useless. But for creativity and code: I think other models may have something to offer me. It’s early days yet, but impressions so far: I’m slightly blown away by it. Who knows, it may even reinvigorate my job. Though that’s a big ask. I’m a machine, learning.
Out of the blue, my wife looks at me seriously.
“I know you think you’re worthless,” she says sternly, “but you’re wrong. YOU’RE WRONG.”
I’m taken aback. Is she a mindreader now, scanning my innermost thoughts?
The trouble is, I know my own self better than anyone, both the hidden and the known, the inner and the outer.
I know what my limitations are. How lazy I can be, and how easily distracted. I know what my shortcomings are.
Others are only aware of what appears to be so. I see it all.
“Envy in the heart, it consumes.”
These words pop into my head on my return from dropping our lad off at school across town.
These the words with which I respond to the self-reproach within as I pass the nice houses, each with two nice cars on the drive.
Momentarily, my regret stings. But soon enough I’m back in our own neighbourhood, home.
Let contentment settle once more. Be not consumed by envy.
