December

As November ends and December begins, so ends my leave-clearing exercise for this year's excess leave that I cannot carry over to the next. Today was an anomaly---I had a free off-in-lieu that needed clearing from having spent the equivalent of standing around for a whole day during office hours at an exhibition. Go figure on that one.

At this point, almost everyone is in the holiday mood, but for me, the fun is just about to start. It's past NaNoWriMo, which means that the month-long writing extravaganza is finally over, and it's time to get back to the regular schedule. And in my case, it means to get back to cranking out code before the year's end to catch up with the time lost from all those ``management'' related things.

I don't really like working in management. It feels as though it is demanding me of a set of skills that I really don't wish to deploy. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm wholly incompetent in the whole ``leadership'' mess---throughout the near three decades of my existence, I had undergone almost every leadership workshop/seminar/programme thing that was foisted upon me, and have gotten good feedback from it all too. It's just that the whole resource management, planning, and meeting games detract from what my real love is---building things with my brains and hands. There are enough of those MBA holders out there who need a job to exercise their management skills, and since I'm much happier working on systems, I ought to be allowed to work on those as much as I can.

Maybe when I'm old enough and sick enough of technology that I will choose to manage humans. But somehow I don't see that day coming up any time soon.

December. Traditionally a loathed month due to... issues, but this time round, I have a good feeling about it. Okay, so I don't have wonderful snow to play with, but the need to plan for my travels, and crank out code and presentations for the work I have been working on (with a deadline too), at least they are comfortable distractions.

And the reading. Never forget about the reading.

As for the writing... it has been a lost cause for quite a while now. That story-a-day is effectively dead, but it had done it's job. I'll probably try it again next year, or at least, try to write a story a week just to keep things going. A story a day was just too intense, and after a while, it became too much of a chore and less fun.

Alright, enough yapping. Maybe I'll write more stuff soon... before the month's end that is.