Off

I had my work leaving do last night, and I now have a month’s gap before taking up my next role. Quite a strange feeling: I have rarely if ever taken such a long break between jobs – probably the previous longest was in 1981/2. I left before Christmas and began the new job a week or so into January.

This comes with a strange feeling of freedom. There is a hiatus. I’ve been working in IT and managing teams and departments for a long time, but suddenly it feels like I have a few weeks off, released. When I’m not defined so wholly by what I do for dosh.

And we do tend (in the UK at least) to characterise people by the jobs they do – and to quite a degree I fear. Further, we often define ourselves that way. This is not new of course – see the Canterbury Tales for example. Chaucer’s pilgrims are famously categorized and named through their trades and callings – they may be typical or atypical examples, but that is the starting point.

So anyway, for a few brief weeks, in a minor way, I don’t (have to) think of myself like that.

It’s quite liberating, and in a good way...