December 2007 Archives

I would have titled this entry "everything old is new again", but it's a phrase I've overused on previous blog entries once too often.

It's apt though. It's almost 2008, and there's plenty of newness heading my way in the New Year: new job, new city, new people, new place to live. A new blog seemed only fitting. Whether it's aptly named is another matter. A dear friend asked that I should keep her up to date with my forthcoming adventures, or as she put it somewhat less delicately "the ensuing chaos", so I credit her with both this new venture into blogdom and its title.

So yes, new job and new city for me, the former being the reason for the latter. The city isn't entirely new I must confess. Rather I'm heading back to the sprawling metropolis of old London town, a place from which I departed just over three years ago to return home. While I never ruled out a future return to London, I'll admit that I didn't see it happening quite this quickly. It was a case of opportunity knocking. Or rather opportunity emailing somewhat mysteriously via a third party, and then arranging for me to sign a non-disclosure agreement before finally revealing itself before me with an offer that was, and I may yet live to regret these words, too good to refuse.

It's not quite a complete return to London, I must stress. The virtue of being head-hunted, I discovered inadvertently, is that it provides an avenue for negotiation. Though the job was tempting I made it quite clear that I'm not interested in a full time return to London. I have a life up here that I've been slowly piecing together over the last few years and I'm not about to leave it lightly. I asked instead whether it would be possible to divide my time between the office in London and working from home in Edinburgh. The answer, to my surprise, was "yes", so the coming year will see me living a tale of two cities.

I have yet to work out the logistics of exactly how this will operate. The new job is for a start up company, the details of which I'm not at liberty to divulge (I take my NDA's seriously), so there will be a lot of work setting things up initially and I've pledged myself to be in the office full time until things settle a little. I've optimistically budgeted 3 or 4 months for this process but I'll be very surprised if it turns out to be remotely close to accurate. But when things quiet down I'll likely be working for two weeks up in Edinburgh followed by 2 weeks in the office. I see much travelling in my future.

I'm still in a state of flux about these forthcoming changes, flip-flopping between excitement, trepidation and outright fear. I travel down on Wednesday and spending the first week finishing things off at my current job, then I have a week to my own devices to settle a little before starting again. I'm most excited about working in an office again, amongst real people. Excellent company though I am, after three years of home working I've become all too well aware of the limitations of my own company. Being able to bounce an idea off a nearby colleague is invaluable and I look forward to being able to do it again, even if I am daunted by the calibre of people I'm likely to be working with.

Regardless, my intent is to make regular contributions here to keep people up to date with what's going on in my life. Perhaps some contributions will be more regular than others - we'll see.

In the mean time, allow me to wish you all a somewhat belated Merry Christmas, and a considerably more timely Happy New Year.

May you live in interesting times!