Thomil's Random Ramblings

Well, that’s taken longer than expected. I think this may be one of the longest breaks I’ve had yet, at least on my English blog. I’m not sure what caused it. Was it the residual exhaustion following the two years of lockdowns? Was it that commuting took more of my energy than I had anticipated? Honestly, I have no clue, I only know that in the time since February 2022, I’ve been as exhausted as never before in my life. I guess the last couple of years in total have left their mark after all, and I certainly haven’t taken enough time off in the past, something I’m definitely looking to rectify this year! Yet, I’m left to wonder. Given the general sense of apathy and detachment I see all around me these days, have we as a society reached a breaking point? Have we always been this exhausted and it is only now, at the tail end of a pandemic and in the early days of WW3, that we as a species are beginning to realise that some things are very wrong in society? It would certainly be a good t...

So, it’s working from home again. Is anyone else getting a distinct sense of déjà moo here? Seriously, we’re now well into the second year of the pandemic here in Ireland and while society may not be as locked down as it once was, a return to the office is likely still months away at the very least. Also, since publishing my first post on this topic back in February 2021, I have a few months of working from home experience under my belt. So, why not turn those lessons into a blog post to feed the content machine? Here are five more lessons I learned while working from home. Write a To-Do List for the Day Using a Task Manager such as Todoist to write out a daily to do list can really make your day easier for you. This goes back to the issue of structuring your day I mentioned back in February of this year. Having a clear outline of the tasks you need to get done that day really helps you feel on top of things. And of course, there’s more than just a little satisfaction in scratching a...

Ah yes, work. You don’t really want it, but you can’t live without it! For most of my working life, I’ve been involved in the IT industry to one degree or another, whether that’s as a Tier 1 Tech Support guy, a business development rep or, in my current role, as an analyst. My blogs have been running in parallel to that for most of that period, with my German blog starting back in September 2009 and this one following two years later. Through all this time, my output has waxed and waned, and yet, I’ve always had that feeling that I could be more productive, produce more articles. Now, this drive to self-improvement is of course innate to most of us, at least those out there who actually produce content. Yet for some reason, a feeling began to take hold over the last few years that this creative output was being held back by my job, by the industry that I’m working in. Granted, my current employer can be a harsh mistress, but is it really an issue, or has my mind been playing tricks on ...

Judging from the analytics, my last list article about working from home did pretty well, so I guess I’ll take a page from the traditional media playbook and squeeze the life out of this whole work from home subject until it is nothing but a shrivelled and dying husk. Okay, that got dark a bit too quickly for my taste. Seriously though, there’s still a ton of stuff to write about when it comes to my current exile to the home office, so I might as well make use of that stuff. Anyway, over this last year almost that I’ve been working from home, I’ve come to realise quite a few things about the reality of this situation, given that we’re probably going to be stuck in our home offices for quite some time to come. Now, just to be clear, these are my personal thoughts and observations and your views may, and likely will, vary. So why not share your takes on these in the comments below? Set up your Workspace To start off, let’s get physical. No, not like that, please, put that thing back on!...

So, we’re finally coming to the end of 2020 with almost worrying momentum. It has certainly been a year to remember. It certainly threw some rather unique personal and professional challenges at me, while at the same time moving in a direction I had not anticipated at all, like, completely. And since we’re already well into December, the month of year reviews, let me start this one by expressing my true feelings about 2020: ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS??? I think it’s safe to say that 2020 has been a complete dumpster fire of a year. It’s like some bored deity, think along the lines of the loafers on ancient Mt. Olympus, got a shovel, dug deep into the bag marked “biblical plagues” and dumped the whole shovel right on top of us. Burning continents, political brinkmanship, a pandemic the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the 1918 Spanish Flu, social unrest unlike anything seen since the Civil Rights movement, and that was just the first half of this year. Add to that a hurricane seas...