Swiming against the tide in a river of shit

And no snorkel ...

Well, the 6 month anniversary in the new job is almost here and things are not quite where I anticipated.

My request to God for a reasonably run, cash strong business has been denied, in favour of a basket case with endless cash issues. I've always known that cash hassles are a fact of life with SME's, they just should be a way of life.

It's no stretch to say that I would have preferred unemployment to the position I'm in now.

However ...

Bad timing in the accounting job market at the moment leaves me needing to stay for at least a couple of months.

AND

I find out this morning that my boss has resigned, and thus I've had calls from the directors wanting to know if I'm leaving too. My answer: No, I'm not looking for work which is a LIE since I saw my mate at the agency on Friday.

*Sigh*

I'm pretty sure I can turn this into more $$$ for me which is one reason this job has only ever been a temporary consideration but will the place last long enough?

Depression, I'm learning, is about having too many questions and not enough ammo to deal with them. Well, besides gin.

Continuing Job Follies

So I decided not to take the lower paying job even though the industry is way more exciting than I've worked in, in the past.

It came down to the fact that the boss wanted to pay around $10K lower per year than my minimum, which was about $25K pa less than what I earned in my previous job. My minimum was a level that Madam2Bar and I worked out we could live relatively comfortably on with a few sacrifices.

Good news is that I also had a prelim interview at an agency for another position which looks good.

I'm not sure about other industries, but job ads from agencies for accounting related positions tend to be light on specifics - especially about the company. I was, however, able to use my l33t interweb skillz and the googlegod came up with what turned out to be the correct company.

So midway through the interview I was able to drop some info regarding the company, it's set up, history etc etc. And it turns out that I'd worked for a company that was in a related industry.

Hopefully, we'll have good news this week.

Sacrificing a good actual opportunity for a potentially great but not certain opportunity is hard, though.

I still hate looking for work

Let me clarify the previous post.

Looking for work <>= unemployed

Looking for work = looking for work and can be employed or unemployed

Unemployed = having no job and looking for work.

Until now I've never been 'unemployed' so I don't feel too qualified to comment on being unemployed.

I can, however, talk with much experience about looking for work while employed (or, in my case, on 'self funded long service leave').

And the worst part is, for me, having an offer and second guessing on whether to take this job or wait a while for something better that may or may not come about.

The second worst thing about looking for work is having nothing to look at.

The thirst worst thing is tossing up whether to take a job that is around $25-30K p.a. less than the previous job.

I hate looking for work.

Probably the worst part of looking for work occurs at what should be the best time: A job is offered and I need to decide to take it or not.

This is when the second guessing occurs. What if something better is just around the corner? Should I hang out for more money? Does this job have an exit strategy in case it all turns pear shaped?

The job I'm looking at is is in an industry that I would LURVE to work in. But it is at around $25K a year less than I was earning, and no car. Sacrificing the $$ for personal satisfaction is all well and good, it's just the other 3 humans in the house that I also need to think about. We're risking music lessons, ballet, sports, movies, luxuries etc. just so I can hang with the kewl people.

Sigh.

The second guessing is killing me.

The Week so far ...

Jobs applied for: 12
Calls Back: 1
Parenting Help at school: 1
Kilometers Run: 23.5
Kilograms Lost: 2.5
Hours Practicing Guitar: 6
Hours on Guitar Hero: 1
Hours Playing on WII: 6
Books Read: 2

I could get used to unemployment.

Whoah!

In his best Bill & Ted voice

So I thought to myself that it's time to check on the blog and maybe tend to a few weeds. After all, it's been a couple of weeks since I posted anything.

A couple of weeks?????OMGWTFBBQ!!??

I think 4 months of non-blogging is some kind of anti-internet crime. I admit, however, to being internet-slack. Lotsa work, work, work, appendicitis scare for the Princess, other assorted bric-a-brac (redundancy alert!!!) of stuff. And the only internet-y stuff has been passive at best.

Except for fighting Madame2Bar off the computer owing to her Facebook related Tetris & Bejeweled addictions. Sigh.

Anyway, I think I'll be posting some more in future. Well, after the week in Bali starting tomorrow!!! (Totally NOT funded by any fiscal stimulus payments thank you very not Mr Rudd).

Then I'll be finding out what the world of the unemployed looks like, as Mr 2BarRiff and the tyrants at GFoC have reached agreement that our lives would be better without each other. They get to keep the car, laptop, mobile, fuel card, unfinished work (ho ho ho) and I get to keep the remnants of the sanity that I pulled out of my depression in a totally Arthur/Excalibur way, but with better imagery than I can summon right now.

Life is good.

Another Year, O Dear

No fear, I'll have another beer.

Or not.

I think my average for New Year's resolutions is about 100% over the last two years. I have gotten better, and I have eaten (and experienced things) more slowly.

This year I think I'd like to work on my mission more. To try and draw my disparate hobbies and interests into something concrete. To pull my random stuff together into a thing. The lack of ever having a sense of a fulfilling mission has been a determining factor in my depression.

Over-arching all of that is a desire to simplify. To not waste time so much on new stuff but focus on what I've started but haven't finished. For example, the desire to buy and learn the saxophone is currently percolating through my brain, but I have a relatively new and difficult instrument that I just haven't gotten around to mastering yet.

I also want to get back to writing, so I'm formulating a series on depression as well as toying with the idea of running a separate blog (under my own name) on my progress with the other instrument.

A new thing for this year is to start by listing what I'm grateful for over the last year (in no particular order):
* Employment. Still continuing though there have been a few moments. The money is good, benefits are ok, power is almost non-existent but I'm working on it.
* Depression. I'm still fighting it, but there are more victories than defeats
* Family. My children are a never ending source of amusement, entertainment, wonder and fear. All the things life should be made up of, I guess.
* Madame2Bar. I still can't quite believe that she's mine, and I'm grateful for every day with her. Plus she can cook. And it's our 10 year wedding anniversary and 13 year dating anniversary this year. Which is, respectively, 10 years and 12.75 years longer than I ever though I would manage.
* God. I haven't felt close this last year, but I know that I am. I see God working around me every now and then, and it's been these little miracles that have helped me keep my faith.
* Music. I love music. It's something I'm more attuned with than I ever realised. This year has seen me focus a little more on the why rather than the doing. So when I started playing in the new church, it was actually fun again (plus I don't have to lead or sing).

What aren't I grateful for?
* GFoc and the tyrants I work for. While they seem to set new standards in assholery, it's been a positive stress, and my hair looks kind of cool now that it's over half grey.
* The demise of OneBarRiff. Dying sucks, no doubt about it. My advice is to avoid it where possible.
* Friendships. Aside from Madame2Bar, I still have a rather empty dance card when it comes to friendships. I, of course, think I am wonderful but it seems that I can't quite convince the rest of the world of this truth.

Budgets and Beer

Not sure what makes my head spin more

In those two lever arch files are approximately 1,280 pages containing 16 columns of numbers (12 months, 4 totals, 1 description and 1 general ledger referance) and a minimum of 30 lines per page, meaning I've spent the last 2 1/2 months generating, checking , referencing and dissecting at least 614,400 unique numbers along with hundreds of emails & phone calls, 20 or so presentations, 2 return flights to Sydney and back and more late nights that I care (or can) remember. It all culminated in a formal presentation lasting a shade under 12 hours.

Budget time is probably the key time of the year for me, where I display all I've learned about in the last year about the 10+ businesses I'm responsible for, wrangle the knowledge and experience of at least a dozen (unco-operative) others, and cobble it all together into an 18 month prognostication upon which I will be judged at some point in the future. All while making sure my staff and department are hitting their targets.

So, as you can imagine, it is a big deal. And having depression means one is often less capable dealing with the big deals.

Being a year older and wiser (and greyer) I was able to observe myself riding the rise and fall of the depression tide. There were moments of panic and rage along with antipathy and madness, anger and humor. What was different this year, was not necessarily the emotions, but the recognition of them and the control (at the good times) and the lack of fear (at the bad times).

I learnt that all of the things that come out of me are me, not something that's happening to me or me reacting to something. I owned every one of those feelings, and if someone let me down, then I was happy to acknowledge the disdain and disappointment. I wasn't '2BarRiff - angry feeling like he was at getting out of control'. I was '2BarRiff - mad at the prick who didn't do what I was counting on them doing'.

And the best thing is that I think others in the office appreciate me for it, judging by the openness and respect I've been shown lately. The others know I have their back because they've seen me taking the bullets (METAPHOR ALERT! METAPHOR ALERT!), for the last year I've been more quiet about it.

As a manager, I've learnt more about dealing with people than ever before. It's one thing to depend on someone, it's another to really, really, really count on them - the instructions need to be precise, the stakes clearly spelt out and the abilities of the person judged against what the task is ... can they already do it, can they grow with this task, what if they cock it up, is it better or easier to stay up an hour later and do it myself?

But finally, the beer's been drunk, and the red wine, and the celebratory scotch. The reruns have been rerun, numbers recast, reconciliations posted. Tomorrow will be the finish and I have 2 weeks of holidays coming up.

I rock. I really do.

Decisions, decisions ...

I couldn't ... could I???

Cyxplycth, Abblefrobnok, Urrlgh!

I think a big indicator of society's downfall, not including it's inability to recognise my genius in monetary form, has been the lack of quality swear words.

Cussing has lost almost all meaning, and now a few f-bombs resound with a faint hilarity instead of an air rending shock.

New swear words are hard to come up with. Variants on themes (eg ass-hat) are ok but just don't cut it in the ear-curdling department.

The subject came to me as I was pounding out the budgets for GFoC* over the last 3 weeks (hence the lack of posts etc). I had around 10 companies to budget for and had spend 80% of the time on the first company as the formats were new and needed a LOT of fixing. So I've been spending all day, and most of the night, for the last few weeks trying to thrash out something that will work (One company alone had over 60 variables just to create the revenue model).

It wasn't until last Wednesday night, at around 1.00 am, when I discovered that instead of taking 2 hours just to format ONE division of ONE budget, I could do x, y and z instead and then the process would take about a minute.

a MINUTE ????!!!!???!! Cyxplycth, Abblefrobnok, Urrlgh!

Strangely, I felt underwhelmed.

* Generic Foreign-owned Corp

Ev'rybody wants to work

No, no, not me...

It's one of the few occasions where my life co-incides with that of Brian Mannix.

I'm a professional, moderately successful, leader of men. Yet I don't like working.

The results are fine. It's just the doing of it is a joyless exercise.

I've talked about procrastination before, and I think this is an echo from when it first arose. The first few years of my career were spent hating it. Actually, it goes back to uni when I worked out fairly early on that accounting was not something I enjoyed all that much. It was the fear of letting my parents down, I think, that kept me going at it.

The wash up is that I take very little pleasure in the day to day of my work. I've managed to ditch most of the technical, boring accounting stuff now but dealing with the mundane of my current job still brings out the bad stuff.

One of the ways I combat this is to reward myself e.g. get the report done and I'll buy myself lunch today. Problem is, I find that I over reward myself. Just last week, I worked at home till 12.30, got in before 7.00, worked 2 hours and spent the next two in a meeting. My reward was to go and get my lunch and spend a half hour on Google reader catching up on my feeds. Unfortunately, I sat there until 3 and wasted the benefits of my hard work.

A tool I'm working on from my last session is the 3 D's as used in addiction therapy - Delay, Dilute, Divert. And it's kind of worked until today. I'm away on work and had allocated the afternoon for doing some grind work for the budgets. The sheer effort of working on this crap and not giving myself a reward that would end up with me not dong anything has now left me with a headache and insomnia, which is why I'm blogging and not sleeping. Sigh.

The work wasn't hard, btw, just of the kind that seems to jerk my chain, procrastination wise.

Here's some Uncanny X-men to cheer me up:

Diary Entry from the Road #2

A little worse for wear today. Yesterday was full on and, while I'm coping, the temptation to just stay in my room and sleep for a couple of hours is high (I just snuck back to the room during the lunch break).

I don't really have an excuse as I broke one of my travelling rules - no big meals. It helps to eat very little and/or go vegetarian as I find that food on the road is a bit rich and my body spends too much energy processing meals instead of concentrating.

The advantage of eating more is, of course, being able to drink more, but I've successfully stayed away from the slops (mostly).

I had a good 6 hours sleep due to my favourite relaxation technique - lying in a hot bath with a good album on the mp3 player. Last night it was Keane's Hopes and Fears and tonight it will either be Massive Attack's Collected or Keane's Under the Iron Sea.

Anyway, time to check the emails and psyche myself up for the afternoon session.

Diary Entry from the Road #1

I'm away on business this week and I'm wondering, as I eat breakfast on the balcony, enjoying the sun rise over the ocean ... am I a prick because I'm upset that the toast is cold?

Famous person count: 2 (David Helfgott and Angry Anderson)

Rules of Accounting

Just because I can

It occurred to me the other day that, since I've spent more than a decade in the workforce, I should have some words of wisdom.

So, here are 2BarRiff's 5 Rules of Accounting:

1. It's all about the cash.
Everything else is smoke and mirrors.

2. Don't let anyone know how you do things.
If they knew how easy it was then they'd be doing it.

3. The only thing harder than trying to manage a result that looks bad is trying to manage a result that looks too good.
A Bad result means you get to interrogate everyone because they missed something.
A Good result means you have to interrogate yourself because you missed something.

4. It's not about the numbers, it's what the numbers mean.
Accountants deal in information, not numbers. But remember Rule 1.

5. Making the hard decisions can be easy.
Remember, as an accountant no-one expects you to have either a conscience, a personality or friends. This can be a plus. The minus is that it only works down. The guy above you is a bigger prick than you are.

Bits 'n Bobs

My great return to blogging has been a little less than impressive. Thankfully, with Madame2Bar out visiting a friend in hospital, the kids in bed and bugger all on TV I have almost zero excuse to blog.

After working my way through the procrastination flowchart, that is (thanks Téa).

I just realised that, even though I've not been blogging, I have at least a dozen draft posts and a good size more ideas sitting on my thumb drive awaiting posting. Which makes me question whether I am a) depressed or b) just a lazybum.

The fascist Howard dictatorship has now been turfed out of office. I must admit that it would have been funnier watching Labor self-destruct after another defeat, than the inevitable Liberal 'handbags-at-dawn' fight over the tattered remains of what is left of their party. I won't cry myself to sleep that Kevni won ... the Liberals have been hard to love lately. I wonder if the party will reform under a new title or continue as Australia descends to one-party rule? Interesting times ...

My little brother, heretofore dubbed 'OneBarRiff', has been in hospital for a number of months with some pretty serious stuff. He thinks he contracted it when his immune system was low on account of depression. Wait a minute ... sister, brother, me ...? I'm sensing a pattern here. So are my parents, which brings more crap to deal with.

Owning a pool is great. I think I've assembled an inventory of chemicals that could make a serious sized explosive. (Hmmm ... I wonder if ASIO tracks these kinds of things?) Being able to take a plunge in a perfectly temperatured pool after a 39 degree day isn't too bad either. Roll on summer.

The low employment rate is starting to bite at work. At the same time, I know plenty of people who are looking around for alternate employment. It's a matter of finding the best fits, I guess. When I started work in the early 90s, you couldn't find an accounting job for love nor money. Now it's gimps straight out of uni wanting $50K per year. Pah!

I'm turning 35 soon! I've started drafting a birthday post but finding it hard to work out want I want to say (not an unusual predicament). I do, however, feel that having nothing to say would be wrong.

And finally, I picked up my guitar for the first time since the operation! Here is video to prove it.



One would have thought that a near 6 month, self imposed layoff would have inspired some creativity ... sorry.

What a week, what a month, what a year ....

Great horny toads, what a week it's been for your humble correspondant. Should I regale you with the details? Why yes, I think I shall.

Sunday Night
8.00pm Resolve to go to bed early due to upcoming big week
12.30am Go to sleep after reading book

Monday
6.00am Wake up and get ready for work
7.05am Arrive at work
11.15pm Leave work
11.20pm Home
12.00pm Sleep

Tuesday
6.00am Wake up and get ready for work
7.10am Arrive at work
4.00pm Suddenly realise had offered to help non-for-profit body with some accounting issues tonight. Curse violently for short time.
6.00pm Home for Dinner, read kids story, put to bed
7.00pm Leave for meeting with non-for-profit body
10.45pm Home
12.00am Sleep after reading book

Wednesday
6.00am Wake up and get ready for work
6.50am Arrive at work
5.20pm Leave for massage
7.00pm Stop past home from massage to read kids story, kisses goodnight etc
7.35pm Back at work
12.55am Respond to cajoling from Madame2Bar (via SMS) and security (via fat security gaurd) and prepare to go home
01.10am Back home, go to bed, attempt to fend off Madame2Bar's affectionate advances
01.12am Fail to fend off Madame2Bar's affectionate advances
02.30am Sleep

Thursday
6.00am Wake up and get ready for work
6.55am Arrive at work
08.30am Head Honchos from Sydney arrive for all day meeting. 2BarRiff is quietly soiling pants
11.00am 2BarRiff finishes introduction. Gets to point of meeting
06.15pm Meeting finishes. Adjourn to restaurant for quiet celebration
06.40pm Pick up new set of glasses on way to restaurant. Looking quite spiffy
07.30pm Restaurant. At table surrounded by foreigners who are far richer than I. Proceed to laugh at stupid jokes and ignore indecipherable accents.
10.30pm SMS Madame2Bar to say on way home and enquire as to her state of dress
10.50pm Arrive home, determine Madame2Bar's state of dress (or lack thereof as it turns out)
12.05pm Fall asleep after, well, ahem ...

Friday
05.45am Wake up and get ready to pick up some of the honchos from Sydney for impromptu morning meeting
07.30am Honchos are picked up and meeting has begun
10.45am Honchos depart for airport. 2BarRiff departs for his intray and emails
12.05pm 2BarRiff departs for restaurant as his staff have organised celebratory lunch over good result from Thursday
12.50pm Arrive at lunch. As host am charming, witty & erudite. Would be more so if the employees of a certain local radio station weren't so loud or so close.
02.30pm Pay bill (no tip for you, young waitress, if you continue to forget my drinks), farwell staff, leave for work as meeting scheduled for 4.00 pm
03.05pm Arrive at work, assorted paperwork: legal opinions, tax opinions, Workchoices changes, sign this, that and the other thing etc, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.
04.00pm Arrive in bosses office for meeting. Receive beer. Start drinking
04.05pm Meeting finished. Back to office for more paperwork: budget numbers, KPI review, etc etc etc
04.10pm Tire of effort. Go in search of people to talk to. Find Business Development Manager.
05.20pm 2 beers and half a bag of biltong later, leave for home.
05.30pm Arrive home. Leave for fast food restaurant.
06.15 pm Arrive home. Coherence starts to fade.
08.00 pm Sleep.

Saturday
06.55 am Awake apparently unmolested.

And, far from being restful, today has been netball, shopping, ice-creams, lunch and quiet time for the kids as I get dinner ready (defrosting chicken for slow cooker) since Madame2Bar is at an all day craft thing and then has a movie tonight. This afternoon will be grocery shopping, refereeing children's fights and some cleaning up around the place. Have scheduled sleepy time for 5 minutes after kids are in bed.