Pre-Christmas grump post - cheerfullness will come!

To quote from my own tweet of earlier in the day, do you remember when the last few days before Christmas at work was relaxed and cheery and everyone having a bit of fun? No, me neither. These last three days have been <i>horrendous</i>. Nothing individual too terrible but just too much to do - though I do resent being stressed because two projects screwed up something important (VAT changes as it happens) and I need to do the work to sort it out. Well, not actually doing the programming but I will have to spec the fixes as soon as humanly possible. I broke a pen in half in irritation this afternoon. Yeah, I'm <i>that</i> hard!

As many of you will have seen from her post yesterday, <lj user="pennski"> has seen an ENT specialist (Ear, Nose and Throat for those in doubt) about her voice and now has to rest it as much as possible. We're coping with it pretty well but it's not much fun for her. Particularly irritating is the knee-jerk sexist reaction that I got from people at work - 'That's fantastic - no nagging!' and variations on this. And any response you make just ends up sounding defensive or humourless. Well f**k em, that's all I can say. How dare people judge what our relationship is like. Yeah, some days I don't like people very much...

But on the plus side a) I get to work from home tomorrow - so I can get the specs written that I need but good anyway, b) our joining instructions for our Norway trip have finally arrived from VJV and c) only 3 days until some new <i>Doctor Who</i>.

I'm one of those sad acts that really likes Christmas most of the time but this last few days has made it difficult to enjoy it. But it will get better...

A Postscript to the grump

Looking back on the last year in LJ, I seem to have posted very little and much of that is about work (and health to a lesser extent). Well, I suppose that's inevitable as work and health issues have dominated my life this year (mine or <lj user="pennski">'s)

What I'd really like next year is to have some mental space to be a bit more creative. Do some book reviews, maybe games and DVDs as well. Maybe write a little more criticism. Stuff I used to rather enjoy but just haven't had the mental capacity for lately.

No guarantees but I'd like to make the effort. I seem to have turned into a grumpy, whiny old man this year and it's annoying - to misquote Anya in <i>Buffy</i> - it even irritates me and I'm closer to it then everyone else!

So we'll see. Encouragement would be appreciated!