Spent the morning going over the AI’s homework that I assigned it last week, correcting it and filling in the gaps. Still quicker than doing it myself? Not sure, although I found its formatting helpful to follow, and that surely saved me some time.

Virtual meeting completed eventually after the organiser (initially) and my boss (all together) failed to appear.

Quick lunch and out for two back-to-back in-person meetings (likely with all the same people).

Back to work

The last time I worked full-time, in 2015, I got fired for taking too much time off sick.

The last time I worked full time before that, in 2011, I got fried for taking too much time off sick.

So I was quite happy to work part-time since 2016, fifteen hours a week to begin with, increasing to twenty two and a half hours in 2017. It felt like something I could cope with.

And it allowed me to spend a lot of time with big kid when he was little, and then little kid, too. Although that was often tiring ‘work’ I feel very fortunate to have had that much time with them when they were so young and fun.

Working two or three days a week and really being in charge of my own hours and schedule also allowed me lots of flexibility. I could almost work when I liked and didn’t worry about how many hours I’d done. If I needed to I could easily make up time or catch up on another day.

Going back full-time today, I was very conscious of how much time I spent working, and not working. I’ve got much less flexibility now to make up my hours.

Then again, I know that at work, it’s possible to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, the bathroom, the hallway, and the office not actually doing much work. I won’t be too hard on myself for making a cup of tea, powdering my nose, connecting the wife to the internet or checking my online socials every now and then.

All in all it wasn’t a bad day. Nothing urgent to do and I ended up going down a fundraising rabbit-hole. Found a couple of new-to-me funders and shared them with the relevant people, one of whom has already said they will apply.

Job done.

This year

This year I’m returning to full-time work for the first time in almost a decade. I’m looking forward to it, though, and my main focus is going to be on researching and writing grant funding applications for local community youth work.

Last term I joined my sons’ school’s parent teacher association specifically to help find grant funding they can apply for. I need to get on with that.

I also hope to be able to get more involved (again) in local democracy and activism in person. I’d like to see if we can get some kind of organised mutual aid and self-help community going.

I want to get fitter and lose some weight, so I’m intend to walk every morning (flat feet permitting) and I’m no longer taking sugar in tea and coffee.

I want to sleep better (which is partly dependent on little kid staying in his own bed all night), breathe better, and get my psoriasis under control.

And I want a new hat.

The Last Supper

Work xmas lunch today was delicious, especially the spiced pear cake for dessert (albeit with the tiniest slice of pear I’ve ever seen).

Company was good, and highlighted how socially inept I am without a couple of pints inside me.

Service was excellent apart from the ridiculous length of time it took to pay the bill. They seemed to need to input each individual course into the till, but couldn’t work out why the total didn’t equal 13 x £16.95 - one of us didn’t order dessert.

Another one of our gathering is likely soon to be deported, which I felt uncomfortably aware of throughout.

No room at the inn

Immigration case I’ve been working on since almost exactly a year ago has finally gone kaput with devastating and life changing consequences for the person involved.

They’ve lived here since they were eighteen. They volunteer to run a wellbeing cafe in a local church. They applied for grant funding to keep the cafe open over winter. We wanted to employ them as a community development worker.

They now have to leave the UK by the day of our office xmas lunch or face deportation.

Years ago, I would grab a Greggs sausage roll every morning for breakfast on the way into work.

On The Bales

The recent farmers’ protests in the UK and a comment on micro.blog about old style rectangular straw bales reminded me (again) of my own farming history.

[@Miraz](https://micro.blog/Miraz) It has taken me many years to get used to this way of packing hay. I grew up with the old rectangular bales that we had to fill the loft with for the horses' winter. What do they call this big rolls of hay? Also "bales"?

Now, obviously, without farmers we don’t eat. All those fields left to grow wild kindly paid for by the European Union… oh, wait, that freebie blew away in the Farage wind and now costs us £2.4 billion of our own money every year.

Talking of wind, apparently the new inheritance tax farmers are protesting will incentivise them to use or sell their farmland for use as wind or solar farms. Presumably to keep the lights and the air conditioning on for the rich when it all goes tits up, while the rest of us scrabble around blaming immigrants and woke lefties.

Farmers are notoriously tight-fisted, as I related in my own story about having my farm labouring wages deducted by the farmer after he gave me a lift home. Tight as a duck’s arse as we used to say. Steve, the farmer’s foreman, walked like a duck. Probably because he spent all day sitting on a tractor shovelling straw bales on to trailers for us to stack.

My first day on the bales ended in disaster. Steve could have lifted me down on his tractor shovel thing, as he he did many times thereafter, but instead allowed newbie me to slide down the ropes we’d just tightened.

My fingertips took several days to regrow. I had fifty pence deducted from my wages for the cost of replenishing the first aid kit, and received a straight knockout for bleeding on the ropes.

Baling was actually decent fun when you got used to the physical aspect of the work. I worked with my mate who lived on the same road, and it was a challenge to stack the bales in the right way and learn particular tricks for making them fit into impossibly small spaces. The lorry drivers often helped and, being Northumbrians, they were usually a good crack. They wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible and to make sure their load wasn’t going to topple over on the long road back to Cockermouth.

The days were often hot and long, and I would spend a lot of time visualising my first pint of the evening when we were done. But invariably, by the time I’d got home, soaked in the bath, eaten and gone out, the last thing I wanted was beer. I usually drank a shandy instead and went home for an early night.

Notionally returned to wfh today.

✅ Made chilli sans carne
✅ Emailed work to say I will try to ease myself back into things, but still feeling exhausted
✅ Declined work meetings on health grounds
✅ Had a three hour nap
✅ Woke just in time for a late lunch
✅ Picked kids up from school

I wrote 300 pages of notes and reflections in my personal and work journals in 90 days.

WFH Saved My Life

I’ve worked from home since the end of February 2020. I transferred all my work and systems online to do so, and while I’m still part-time, in practice I’m now available 24/7 for every conceivable administrative emergency (“Hi David. Please order me some large coloured post-it notes and have them delivered to my home tomorrow” or “Hi David. Please bring £200 in cash to my house this morning so I can pay for my lunch meeting today.”).

I won’t pretend I’ve always been highly productive, in the office or at home. But I always get everything done that needs to be done, and I’m super-flexible and adaptable. I’ve been asked to do - and done - huge, complex projects at short notice and with short deadlines that are outside of my remit and frankly beyond my skill set, but I’ve done them, learned how to do it on the spot or got help.

I do go into the office for occasional in-person meetings and social gatherings (“xmas lunch” looms) when necessary, and indeed spent a solid three hours working last Thursday with a masked colleague (she had a fever) in a freezing cold office. I’d just recovered from a bad reaction to the covid vaccine. Next day was a write-off. I was exhausted and worried about whether the work we did was really good enough. The day after and since I’ve had a terrible cough and cold, shortness of breath, wheezing. (Since my COPD diagnosis, every rasping breath I take is assessed and rediagnosed by my non-medic wife as requiring medical attention.)

My workplace is bad for my health. Pre-covid I had multiple chest infections that kept me away from work and reduced my productivity to zero for weeks at a time. Since I worked from home, and catching covid aside, I’ve had zero time where I’ve been unable to go to the office for essential work that can only be done there. Even when I’ve had coughs and colds, I’ve felt well enough to do the work that needed to be done. Somehow (until now with this new cough) I don’t seem to get so ill or feel so bad when I’m at home.

Working from home has given me the time and space to transform how I work for the better. I’m better organised, more thoughtful, less rushed and distracted. I can honestly say that I’m now the most productive I’ve ever been thanks to a more comfortable, relaxed and focussed personal work space.

And, yes, being part-time, and flexible, I can take a nap if I need one.

Why should people work at home? youtu.be/bQN_Fb03RfE?si=CZoQag The ‘return to work’ now being enforced by many organisations makes no sense for many people, or the planet. It really is time that we have some enlightened managers who did what is best for people and the world, and not what they see as being best for them.