Could this really be a “day in the life” post at long last?
Early Morning
Sat on the train at our local station. It’s dark outside, the rain is slowly coming down, tickets for the day are already bought (not always a given), and the engines are rumbling.
Finally we are moving.
Over the last few days I have been busy trying to dig myself out of a bottomless hole of my own making. Totally my own fault. Among the various pulls on my time have been the following;
Day job - generally involves either headbanging enormously complex programming problems, or writing huge swathes of code to satisfy half-written requirements that continually change. Begins at 9 in the morning, and ends at 5:30pm.
Family life - begins as soon as I fall out of bed, lurches through breakfast time, making of lunches, and half of the school run. Continues the moment I get home from the day job - washing up, tidying up, eating dinner together, bedtime stories, and perhaps a rubbish movie with my better half.
Freelance work - begins when dinner finishes, and invariable continues into the early hours. Generally involves picking apart all manner of content management system themes, authoring of graphics, writing of PHP code, Javascript, HTML, and chunks of SQL.
Blogging - fills the cracks of the day. Witness the authoring of this post while perched on a train seat, somewhere between Bourne End and Maidenhead. Sat opposite smart people who look like they know what they are doing.
Finding time to read and comment on friends blogs eats the remainder of any cracks of daylight I might have left.
Time to shut the netbook down. Too many people on the train now. Just got kicked by somebody - can’t frown at her because she’s disarmingly pretty…
Morning
Sat in Reading Station with a coffee. Costa Coffee was curiously quiet - perhaps because I got an earlier train than normal (the train I would normally miss on this commute was late enough that I caught it). A woman just pulled a chair up to sit at the same table as me, then changed her mind when the adjacent table became available. I must smell or something… it’s it strange how most people live in their own little bubble these days; never wanting to make eye contact with others, let alone talk.
I was just about to term the people walking in and out of the coffee shop “business people”, but it strikes me that I’m wearing a suit today - just as they are - does that make me a “business person” too ? I feel like such a fraud. A suit of clothes does not change the person you are. I wonder who these people really are - these people that are so busy, with their bags, and their coffee, and their neat haircuts?
Watching the clock. I have to set out towards the client office soon - a short taxi ride from the station to another world that I can’t write much about. Sorry!
Time to drink the coffee, pack the bag, and change heads for the rest of the day. Time to work.
Late Afternoon
Sitting on the train, engine running, ready to begin the journey home. A mixed day, peppered with training on a very expensive product that reluctantly behaved itself, and caused no end of stress along the way.
Evening
Now in the shelter at Maidenhead, bathed in flourescent light - huddled together with a ragtag collection of commuters searching for respite from the bitterly cold night air. The floor shakes from time to time as trains rumble past, and cold air erupts from the door as newcomers arrive.
A businessman sits in the corner reading his newspaper. I say “reading”, but the term really doesn’t do him justice - he’s reading in the manner one might if you were determined to be seen to be reading, and you damn well weren’t going to look up for anybody or anything.
Having just missed the supposedly connecting train towards home, I now have half an hour to kill until the next one… or at least I hope I do. Should probably check the screens out on the platform, but that would mean going out in the cold. Bugger that.
Is this where I admit to having Rascal Flatts shouting into my ears via the MP3 player? Perhaps not…
Soon be home. The prospect of another evening working on a freelance project lies ahead.