Sometimes I wonder about the advantages of being yourself, or how anyone can even be him or herself when there is so much influence from everyone else, even subconsciously. I guess that’s one of the reasons why teenagers are so keen to fit in a lot of the time, because they are still discovering who they are /random thought

I had a lovely Christmas, thanks for asking It wasn’t anything particularly special, and yes we all got far fewer presents this year, but it also meant they were a lot more thoughtful, and I can use every single one of them and will do willingly. New Year will probably suck because I can’t go anywhere due to lack of transport, but Laura is supposed to be coming to visit me which will be good.

I’m back at work now; first day back was today and the office was dead. There wasn’t even a receptionist around: our usual one, Janet, has been off ill, and there has been a subsequent stream of temps, all of which I’ve called ‘Other Janet’, topped off with a guy who I’ve nicknamed ‘Manet’ – his real name is Matt. So I took advantage of the situation to take loads of stationery, since there’s always something stealing my pens (I know my life is thrilling these days). I had to recruit help in the form of a woman who I’m now sharing an office with as our teams have merged. It was ridiculously complicated – you need a key hidden in a drawer to open another drawer which opens the stationery cupboard. Yet the cupboard with all the private mail is left unlocked next to it. It’s beyond my understanding, but I guess it shows where my co-workers’ priorities (and my own) lie!

Work these days has got a lot more complicated as there is a crazy amount of managerial strategy-ing going on. I do my copy, my manager alters it, her manager alters that…sometimes I wonder why she just doesn’t do it herself. I feel bad for Brad and Lee though, as they now have about 15 people looking at every homepage they do for every website (8 a week) and giving their corrections and opinions. I’m not entirely convinced this is helpful, and I’m not entirely convinced that using a slightly different shade for the background of a temporary banner will suddenly mean people rush out and buy hundreds of the product, but hey, what do I know. If 15 people have to discuss it and give feedback on it, that’s up to them.

The worst thing about it is that the smallest thing gets snowballed into a giant catastrophe blown out of all proportion. Trust me on this one, if I’m not that bothered, it really isn’t worth getting bothered about, as most people who know me tell me I overract, should let things go more easily, etc. etc. And it’s true. So if I’m pretty laid back about it, the average person wouldn’t give a flying shit monkey. But yeah, you’d think world war three was breaking out or something. Hopefully once we all settle down together they’ll realise that our team’s jobs are like this. A lot of things go wrong a lot of the time, we don’t always know why they happen, yes we do know who to talk to about it and usually we can figure out how to fix it, but no, even if we make the changes now, they probably won’t be live for a few days. There isn’t anything more we can do. No, there really isn’t. Yes, we have made all the right changes.

Just yesterday I felt like I’d been away for months, yet by the end of today it felt like I’d never left. Yay?

Merry Christmas everyone!

Like a lot of people, December is the busiest time for me, and that appears to be true even without university or any kind of education in the way! I’ve officially finished work for Christmas; I’ve taken until the 28th December off. A definite difference to having weeks or even months off at a time, I only have 25 days a year. They also have further restrictions – I have to give at least two weeks’ notice before asking for holiday, it must be signed off by a manager, and it can’t be longer than two consecutive weeks. So I’m trying to spend it very very wisely!

At the moment I’m staying at Joe’s in Nottingham, then I will be going home to Manchester on Monday. In total, including back to the south east, I’ll be travelling 350 miles. And that’s not even travelling within places when I get there!

So, what have I been up to? Well I have a new manager-manager as my team is merging with another one. She’s nice, and also it has been universally agreed that she’s louder than me, which is probably a good thing! I have also been doing various things to make work more fun, such as ‘Moustache Monday’ (the pound shop sells stick-on moustaches) and baking.

Wednesday was the work Christmas party – everyone left early as usual when we go for a night out – except the most hardcore people and those staying the night at the hotel. It was quite fun, but tiring on a mid-week night. One think I do like about work though is the amount of people who insist on buying me drinks and refuse to accept one back Very cheap night out!

My birthday was also good – thanks to everyone who wished my happy birthday. It was a bit weird because it was my first one without my family – Joe came down which was lovely, but had to leave. I got a DS Lite, Wall-E on DVD, candles, a game, a phone duck (don’t ask), Amazon vouchers, books and a few other bits and pieces. Definitely shows how the credit crunch has affected my family thinking back to last year…! I am grateful though. And I do feel old!

Christmas shopping is all done – just hoping that my review points will be transferred into a £55 Amazon voucher for the last of the presents in time!! If not it will be a late Christmas present

In terms of the site, I’ve written several new pages, but I’ not exactly sure what to do. I’m tempted to revamp everything a section at a time, but then I’m thinking of altering the sections so I’d like to get some more new content under my belt first. The content itself is going to be quite different; I’m going to have a kids’ section for the dollmakers and such, but all the reads are going to be in the style of the new pages I’ve written so far. This basically means longer, more informative, and based at a slightly higher level. I have learned a lot about the business side of the Internet since I started my job, and this is going to be used. Unfortunately I have no idea what kind of age this writing is suitable for, so that might need thinking about in some detail. It is bizarre how much search engine optimisation and such I’ve been doing since I was 14 without officially calling it that or even thinking about it…

So today I plan to spend catching up on Internet things and hopefully working on content. My main aim is to completely update the site to be more current and actually feel like me again, work on some skins/themes from scratch whilst working on other projects at the same time. It’s going to be mad, but I hope to dedicate at least one full day to webdesign this holiday (sounds crazy when I used to work about 20 hours a day on it at weekends – great going to bed exhausted and waking up the next day and seeing it all prettified).

Joe’s working all day, but I’m seeing Bethany this evening and probably going out for a meal so it’ll be lovely catching up. But for now, back to the working on the site thing. It’s going to be slower than usual since I’m not used to this keyboard, but here goes….