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On hating Monday now that it's Tuesday.

On Friday, I caught myself thinking “I really don’t want Monday to come.”

Shortly followed by “If I think like that I’ll spoil the next two days.”

Spoiling in this context refers to walking around in a dream, refusing to make decisions about anything, forgetting the location of the car keys, putting off doing jobs, allowing the washing to grow into piles that would require a troop of sherpas and several laundry-basket-carrying pack-horses to transport down one flight of stairs, failing again to find my green fingers and plant up my pots, not submitting (of course!) and procrastinating into the wee small sleepless hours. Why?

Does working somewhere new do this to everyone? Or does it just happen to me? It’s not the foreign place, nor the clientele but the threat of an alien computer system. Which has a logging-in and password set up that never works at the first attempt. A practice with its own way of doing things; that files letters in irretrievable places and where equipment resides in unlabelled drawers, or cupboards half way down a distant corridor, or with someone in Room 6.  All of which conspires to build my flair for stifling incompetence, renders me dysphasic and feeds a caffeine craving that only exacerbates my already nervous tremor. This is how I feel inside. The expression 'polar opposites' springs to mind (one frequently abused by Littlest even when the subjects are not particularly different like cats and dogs, orange and yellow, peas and carrots) since I must appear completely different outside - evidenced by the fact that I have been asked back! Aaargh!

Acting calm is the key. And don't succumb to panic. 

I have tricks to “stay calm” – concentrate hard on the landmarks during the journey to work and think, think, think about the journey home – it will happen no matter what; breathe; send texts to the outside world and hope that someone replies; have that promised coffee; breathe; make a list of all the things I didn’t do over the weekend and will do tomorrow – imagine doing them and feel good about it while indulging in a patting-self-on-the-back moment; and ... write in whatever breaks arise, such as now (half an hour for lunch). And resolve to post later. Or on Tuesday.




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