Life OUtside the Washing Basket

Now this is one of those posts where I feel the need to acknowledge my own failings alongside my perceptions of other people at the same time - I'm naturally quite introverted and find certain cultures harder to break into than others.

I'm not going to break into historical nonsense here about teams in my distant past, as with some notable exceptions (my BFF and another couple of friends), I have consigned most of that to the land known as Before, they are the things and people and situations that made me who I am today, but they are not the experiences that I want to define my career going forwards.

So what I will natter about are the 2 project teams I've worked with since leaving training (the land of After).

My first team, from the outside, seemed like a bit of a dysfunctional family, we sometimes got on each other's nerves (thank goodness for the boss man's Headphone Rule to give us some personal space occasionally).  But when it came to working together, there…

It's weird how our brains work isn't it?

Just a week ago I was sitting in a state of panic (to the point of tearing up) at the thought of the impending parental leave of my senior developer (which will leave me in sole charge of development work on our team for 4 months).

As a Bank Holiday week, I've had only 2 days in the office, but for the first time in a long time, we sat down with the system in front of us and worked on some simple changes TOGETHER.  I'll come back more to that capitalisation in a later post, but I think that exercise, and addressing some of the main kinds of change that I would be expected to deal with in the next few months, made a massive difference in the confidence I have that I won't simply drown the second the senior goes on leave.  I have another 3 days left with him this week, so I am hoping for more of the same.

I also think that doing a mental 'brain dump' here on the blog is kind of cathartic, if it's out here on screen…

Having resurrected the blog after some time away, I figured that the first order of business ought to be a touch of catch-up, it's seemed like a long year, despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of structure of new formal study modules to start, assignments to prepare etc..

Hmm - where to begin? 

I'll start at home:

The Washing Basket remains firmly abdicated, although we have negotiated terms over the ironing which gets exchanged for a full day's dish-washing.  After about 8 months I pulled myself off the couch and am starting to make inroads in domestic issues, the shed had a long-overdue overhaul and many loads of rubbish were taken to the skip, as well as new homes found for Phillip's old bikes which he'd long since outgrown.

Moving onto work:

The project I'd been working on since joining the team reached 'maintenance' stage, where there was no real new development work, and the support of the live product was to be taken on by a team in another l…

Wow - it's been a LONG time between posts this time round!!

(and I will admit even a long time getting round to posting this and not sitting in a half-completed draft state!!)

I have to admit, I'd kind of lost my way a bit with the will to blog even over on the Beyond the Basket page -  I changed teams at work and with that came a massive slump in confidence.

I doubted how to continue now that I didn't have an 'OU journey' to blog about.




And at the time I felt like there were only so many ways I could keep saying 'this job is a roller-coaster of emotions'.  I've learned loads when I look back on it all, most of it unrelated to the project I'm working on, which is a new place to be.

But lately I feel a need to blog a little bit about the rollercoaster itself, it lends itself to my initial reasons for starting the blog in the first place - to share the ups and downs of the journey. 

And while this journey is now outside of the OU 'basket', I&#…

How to organise the tumble of my thoughts around graduation then?


I think this picture says it  best - happy, happy, happy!

Made the ever-familiar metro journey with hubby and child by my side this time, then abandoned them so they could do a bit of shopping in Newcastle, whilst I did the official bits of registering my attendance and getting dressed officially in the academic robes.  Mortarboards (or motor boats as my BFF calls them) are not permitted for the ceremony, they can be hired at extreme prices if you're so inclined for photos though.  (I was not so inclined..).  Had my first couple of 'moments' in this bit of time - firstly at catching sight of other graduates in gowns outside the Sage (our venue for the day), and then standing in the queue for my gown fitting.  I've said it a few times through this journey, but occasionally it all feels a bit surreal, like it happened to someone else.  As distance learning students, often the graduation ceremony is one of …

Well, it's nearly almost here now!  Graduation day tomorrow - yippee!  The final step on the OU road, and one I've looked forward to for so long, it seems almost unreal that it's happening.I'll update again in the next couple of days with some pictures and feelings from the day, but I just needed to share in the buzz of pre-graduation excitement.See you on the other side of the gown!