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p>’Experts’, bless ‘em, have calculated that tomorrow, Monday 24 January, is going to be the Worst Day of the Year.

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Yeah, thanks for that. Like I needed any help cultivating a bad case of not just the Sunday blahs, but the January blahs too. The mornings are dark and cold, the evenings are dark and cold, and what goes between them on a Monday doesn’t really bear thinking about on a Sunday night.

January sucks. Everybody’s in a grotty mood, and I’m sure that even the best job in the world seems lousy and unfulfilling at this time of year. I left such a job last year. I had a job in a graphic design studio, working on Quark Xpress, Photoshop, Illustrator and the like on a Mac. Granted, the Mac had more personality issues than I did, and working with it drove me bananas. That plus getting to know a new team, plus the whole crappy January-ness of things had me off sick for a while, then chucking in my contract in favour of a return to a job that had just one redeeming feature – it was part time.

After leaving that job, I got my life together a bit more – gave up alcohol, took up self-help books, and tried to get my head together. I thought initially that I was meant to be a writer, so I reduced my hours from 4 days a week to 3 days a week to write more MBLM books. Which was fine until that job, with its mind-numbing boredom and its bizarre management, also drove me to asking my pal on the Temp Register to find me something else. Which she did. Full-time, but in a nice office with nice folks. There I ended my time as a temp as I landed the job I have now.

Admin work was only ever meant to be something I did while finding what I really wanted to do, a bit of a stop gap. I’ve been doing it for fifteen effin’ years! That’s a bit too long for a stop gap! So, I’ve come up with a cunning plan to make sure next January* doesn’t get the better of me. I’m going to find a job similar to the one I left last year (and if you’d like to see an example of my graphic art schkillz click here), and try to start my career for real, fifteen effin’ years after leaving college.

*Michael – next January is our 10 year anniversary. Maybe we should celebrate it by spending the entire month in hibernation? We could record our first album, “Wet Alien” by The Pigtallipogles. Whaddaya think, luv?

When it comes to clearing out the bank balance, Michael and I do it in *style*. Before we gave up drinking we didn’t have much in the way of disposable income. Well, we did, but we chose to drink it all rather than spend it on cool toys. Now, it’s cool toys all the way, as Michael explains in his last blog entry.

I’m so pleased Michael has become interested in playing guitar again. And no, it’s nothing to do with any Kirk Hammett-related bedroom activity before you ask. It’s great to be able to jam along together, me on the ESP, him on the ’59 Stratocaster, ’52 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop or the ’68 Rickenbacker 360 . Next step is to teach Sweeney to play drums, then we’ll be able to form our band…

The Pigtallipogles*

*don’t blame me. Michael came up with that one.

For your viewing pleasure, a gallery of some of my best Photoshop/Painter Classic/ArtRage pictures.

From the first time I stuck Sweeney’s head on the body of a celebrity, to more artistic adventures with Le Painter Classic, it’s all in here. Enjoy!

Looking for No.8 wire: "In four week’s time, all being well, I’ll step blinking from the air-conditioned cocoon of an Emirates 747 into the warm afternoon sunlight of Auckland. Ahead of me will lie a three week road trip across New Zealand, from Auckland in the north to Dunedin in the south – a trip in search of future opportunities for myself and my family."

I’ve been reading bignoseduglyguy’s blog for quite a while now, first interested by his writing about GTD and productivity matters. Well, it looks like his new blog should be even more interesting – he’s planning on emigrating with his family of six from their home in London to New Zealand. He obviously really liked Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films

I’ll be keen to read how things go, and wish him all the best with this – it’s a massive step, but he couldn’t have picked a more amazing and beautiful country to aim at.

Update: Corrected whoopsies. Thanks, Tim!

jkOnTheRun: Maximizing the mobile experience: “I should point out that laptops and Tablet PCs can also benefit from these best practices and they are by no means restricted to just UPCs. The tips and recommendations that follow are the results of trial and error over many years of working as a mobile professional. Some of them apply to general use of the mobile device and others are specifically for the traveler.”

JK has excelled himself with this article – lots of great tips for mobile computing, but at least a few good ones for anyone. The idea of keeping as little as possible installed and running on a machine to keep it performing its best is certainly true. I go in long cycles – format, build from scratch, then slowly get tempted into installing more and more things, and trying things only to delete them. Eventually the machine gets too bogged down, and runs slowly and unreliably. Time to format and rebuild again. Either I’m getting better at resisting, though, or Windows is getting more resilliant to such treatment. I used to go through the cycles every couple of months, now it’s more like a couple of years.