Other People

My flatmate resigned from her job because it was more stressful than it was worth. She works in the education sector.

I can understand her reasoning.

If you're in education, it's generally 'cause you like the kids. Most people who leave a school will say, 'I'm not leaving because of the kids - they're great and I'll really miss them....' with the underlying message being that they're leaving because of the staff or systems at that school.

Stress is other people.

(And kids don't count as 'people' - it's a rite of passage for them to try and rile me and up and keep me on my toes.) Kids never really upset me. I have never cried because of something a kid has said or done - they're almost always transparently hormonal or testing out the limits. It can be explained away.

I like my job in many ways because I work really autonomously. Within a set of rules, I can do what I like, when I like, as long as I follow the right systems.

When other people don't follow the systems at work and when their projects encroach on my reasonably well-planned autonomy, it's annoying. If I stuff up, I'm totally willing to wear it and fix things and not complain. It annoys me when other people's stuff ups ruin my plans.

I hit my wall at work yesterday. I'd had a week full of people pushing their own things onto me - I was having to use all my non-contacts (and some after-schools) doing 'urgent' admin I'd only just received or found out about.

I used the 'f' word.

That's how annoyed I was.

Other people. Bleh.

I think my patience is a bit thin at the moment. I don't know if my work-place is any worse than any others - people are just people.

Luckily my class's plays were so humorously bad that I had a fun afternoon after my 'f-word' lunch.

One group hadn't properly rehearsed their costume changes, so kept exiting the wrong side and having to crawl 'discretely' across the stage in the middle of a scene. And one girl was left on stage by herself for an awkward amount of time, so she just started laughing manically (kinda in character).

Another girl is a great comedic actress, but unfortunately she was playing a relatively serious role (Viola in 'Twelth Night') so during her rehearsals I'd kept telling her to cut out the over-dramatic acting and remember she was supposed to be a servant ..... so somehow that translated in her mind as 'talk in a monotonous robot voice'.

Ah, the comedy of Shakespeare being done by Year 9s. Just as Shakespeare intended it.

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I'm liking 'The Big C' (the TV show).

* * *

Yay for the Hobbit staying in NZ.

Boo for an odd precedent of corporations negotiating specialist treatment from the government. And boo that I am not studying the film industry this year with my class - would have been exam revision gold!

* * *

My cooking hobby continued with a successful ratatouille experiment. Roll over, pilaf, I have a new favourite dish. The only trouble with this one is that cutting up pumpkin is boring and stink. But it felt really healthy and was tasty.

Again my second attempt was more successful (though the first one was good enough) - I roasted the pumpkin a bit more and the taste and texture was superior. Also I cut the red onion up a bit more chunky.

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I was bored the other weekend so reactivated my profile on a dating site. I haven't had any inspiring messages .... but for the first time ever, I got sent a random mean message.

It was really weird. This guy sent a one sentence message saying he didn't like the expression I had in one of my photos (except in words not so nice as that). It was overtly rude, rather than 'cheeky'.

I was taken aback in that a) this is a site this guy was paying to use (so he wasn't a teenager or anything) and b) why would he feel the need to randomly message a stranger that??? and c) if you're going to insult someone, you'd think you'd at least say something better than 'your expression looks dumb in one of your photos'.

So I had a quick look at his profile and saw that he'd come across as really pretentious and had said he was a 'sophisticated' guy and sent back something like 'Wow, can see your claim to be sophisticated is not false advertising'.

Today he sent back another message saying 'Well, you don't look sophisticated in your picture - you look like a retard'.

Maybe Paul Henry is masquerading as a 30-something year old single Wellingtonian now that he has extra time on his hands, trolling dating sites. Maybe he could be my new boyfriend.

Odd.