Back to work

Christmas is well and truly over. Glittery decs put away, cards in the recycling, house tidied and ironing done. It's back to the grindstone tomorrow.

I love Christmas, with all its sparkle and cheesiness. Which makes the new year return to work seem even greyer and less attractive. I'm conscious I'm always whinging about work and that in reality there are lots of other people with much worse jobs than me (or even no jobs) but I honestly feel I didn't sign up for this much hassle on a daily basis.

My parents would not have recognised the modern workplace. The pressures to perform, tight finances and the knowledge that you are only one step away from the dole queue. In their day, the public sector really was the tea drinking pen pushing environment of comedy (at least in some departments) and the private sector was where hard work was rewarded with high salaries. In some ways, some of that is still true but I do think the boundaries between the two sides have blurred.

Nor would they have suffered from the motives that push us on - mortgages, rampant consumerism (not all of you reading this will suffer from all of these, and nor do I, but many do) and keeping up with the Jones's (whoever they are), plus the availability of credit cards and loans causes many of us to fall into an enormous financial black hole without even noticing. Whilst they were poorer, they were certainly less stressed and happier.

However we are where we are. A domestic council of war in the new year about money (already had two years of no pay rise, and only 1% due this year despite inflation running at 5% ish for the last three years means we're VERY skint), plus resolutions (already propounded on this blog) will keep me busy. I am resolved to go forward in a spirit of optimism no matter what is thrown at me. I wonder how long it'll last?