Disconnected

1. While I am on board with the general concept of "ageing", and even "wrinkles", I fail to see how it is fair that instead of crinkly, friendly crow's feet and/or laugh lines, I — a singularly smiley person, I do believe — should be developing this rather scary tangle of frown lines radiating out from the bridge of my nose like, I dunno, a road map of London or something. If London had a selection of pretty heavy horizontal roads in the middle. Oh wait, it does.

2. I think some secret force at work is conspiring to make me feel thoroughly lost and, um, there is no word for how I feel. The apparent complete failure to learn from past lessons. In fact it is not that I am not learning, it is that each new project turns out to be radically different to the one before and the lessons previously learnt backfire in new and interesting ways. Viz: after two projects of, let us call them Type A, being dumped on me at very short notice and causing all kinds of stress and sleep deprivation and skipped Italian classes and ocular inflammation,* I felt that I had certainly learned that if another Type A project came along, I knew exactly what I needed to do to manage it; a large part of this would be immediately booking large amounts of support staff, especially if said project were to be over a certain size.

Type A project comes along. It is large. It is on a seriously short deadline. Right, say I, gimme freelances and lots of them, I Will Be Prepared.

By the end of day 1 on this third project, it has become apparent that while it is indeed large it is also very simple; there will be barely enough to keep ME busy** for the rest of the scheduled duration, let alone my minion hordes. This is embarrassing. Also, since I am still angling to get my contract transmogrified into a Real Job, and the decision to do so will be all about the money my projects bring in, it is seriously counterproductive to be spending money on freelances that are not needed.

3. This is the difference between spending £80 at Next, and spending £80 at Jigsaw:
At Next, you get 4 garments handed to you in a big plastic bag.
At Jigsaw, you get 1 garment lovingly folded in multiple layers of tissue and floral printed plastic***, then placed in a smart paper bag, and your receipts get handed to you in a neat little logo-printed envelope. Fat lot of good that'll do you since they only have a 14-day return policy anyway.****

4. I'm going to Cape Town in September! Yay!

5. I am suffering a wholly irrational wave of homesickness, which has very little to do with how wonderful Cape Town is (though it is) or how much I miss my friends (though I do) but an awful lot to do with some kind of nostalgic longing for a comfort zone that I never really inhabited.*****

6. Learning things is fun! This week I have gotten a completely ridiculous amount of entertainment out of learning: how to do a figure 8 cast-on; how to order a drink in Italian; and how to do part of my job without bothering people I previously had to bother. All fun!

7. Also fun: naked men all over the South Bank! How much fun are they? *So* much fun. Apparently they're supposed to make you feel lonely, but I find them utterly delightful.

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* That part really pisses me off. It's not a look that goes well with the aforementioned road map.
** Only a slight exaggeration.
*** It seems unfair to call it plastic, it's far too posh for that, being all matt and soft to the touch and all, but it does appear to be some sort of petrochemical-derived substance, yes.
**** Not that I have any desire to return my lovely skirt at all. I'm just saying.
***** This same longing is probably a significant driver of my periodic "I wanna go study something!" bouts, which are really more about rosy memories of student days and how much fun they were than about wanting to stretch my brain. (Yeah, being permanently broke, getting accused of laziness because I had to work so much of my non-lecture time I couldn't keep up with the research, and having absolutely no clue what I was going to do with my life... that was a blast all right.)