Beginnings, Endings, the Turning of the Wheel

I honestly don't know how this is going to pan out really. In my previous employment, I was - you may have detected - a more or less full-time blogger. I was so "efficient" at my work that I could more or less just browse the innernet and blog full-time. Obviously, it wasn't me doing this. When I say "I", I mean "a friend of a friend".

Sometimes this browsing of the internet was work-related. Quite a lot of it, in fact. I can say this with an honest heart, because I no longer visit around 90% of the web sites I used to frequent. Just don't bother with them. There was a phase of my life, it's clear now, when I was all about Apple computers. This started in 1996 and started to tail off two or three years ago when a little bit of the world-weary "seen it all before" entered my thinking. It's not just that I've lost interest in the world of Apple, I genuinely think they're not as good, or as much fun, as they used to be. It's a bit like a Southern Rock band, after the first couple of brilliant records, and then it's not fun anymore, and all the songs are about the record company and "being on the road."

For example, I found iMovie 2, back in the 18h Century of computing, a joy to use. I've said this before. It was a joy to use, but subsequent versions are not as good, they're more like everyone else's software: things go wrong, it's buggy, and it works more slowly, even though the machine you are running it on is 5x faster (at least) than the one you ran version 2 on. It's a paradox, something to do with what Simon is referring to below. The business model, the marketing cycle: these things don't have anything to do with making things better. They have to do with generating revenue and keeping people employed.

It's a huge difference. Maybe, around the time of iMovie 2, someone at Apple really believed that the software was so good that it would increase the market share of the company. In reality, they've realised that most of their sales growth and revenue comes from existing customers. Which means upgrades. And upgrades, in general, make things worse, not better.

But you don't need me to tell you that.

What I'm trying to say is, life for me has undergone a big change. I've walked away from one career and towards another. My hours are going to be different, and my circumstances are going to be radically different. It was with some joy that I realised today that I will no longer spend hours and hours of sitting in an (airconditioned) office in front of a computer display. When I was doing it, I made the best of the situation, which is why blogging was invented.

But now I'll be in classrooms, writing on whiteboards, strolling up and down between desks, getting 11-16 year olds (and maybe at some point 17 and 18 year olds) to think about things and express themselves. I won't be computering as much. And I certainly won't be doing as much blogging.

Even in my period of unemploy, I've noticed that I don't really have as much to say as I did when I was computering full time. I said to Roy, it's a bit of a public/private split. When I'm sitting home alone, there's less of the public me available for things like blogging. The introvert takes over: the one who doesn't need to talk to people so much, and can happily while away time doing and thinking about other things.

I've been trying to keep it up. But I've realised that I have way too many blogs, and that I no longer have enough public self to spread around.

So if I do blog, it'll be over at the quiet backwater of Maximum Bob, or the Book Reviews blog. I'll probably steer clear of Guitargas, because I'm going to be earning peanuts for at least a year, and don't want to drive myself insane with desire for things I can't have.

I'm not announcing a retirement, just facing facts. I'm going to tidy this garage/studio at the weekend, and get it into a state that encourages me to make music, and chuck out all the paraphernalia of job applications and the accrued mess of months of pottering around. Doubtless the other Holyhoses guys will keep you entertained, but do stop by Maximum Bob now and then if you find yourself missing my dulcet tones. Those of you who email me occasionally, I will of course reply, but maybe not as instantly as one might if one (or a friend of one's friend) was sitting in an office bored out of one's skull.