Remedying recent neglect

It's been a long time since I've left four days between journal entries. There are lots of things which I could report, and I'm aware that I haven't reviewed 'The Impossible Planet' yet. It'll have to be a double review with 'The Satan Pit', I think.

Inspired by ladyofastolat and bunn, and reminded by the recent pictorial post by loneraven, I thought I'd post some images of my desks. My home desk will have to wait as the battery on my camera has run out, but here are a couple of pictures of my immediate office environment:
( Pictures behind cut )

Jobquest

I can tell that more and more of my time is going to be taken up by job applications.

Recruitment has changed a lot since 1999. Applications seem much more rigid, with further particulars setting out narrowly defined requirements, sometimes in grids, with 'essential' and 'desirable' as headings above tick boxes. Presumably this sets forward the criteria for the interviews which can be passed back to the personnel office of the recruiting institution to meet some criteria of fairness. All well and good, but this system favours specialism and demonstrable experience in that specialism and my strength is in generalism and adaptability.

I suspect that the growth of invitations for 'informal contact' in job adverts reflects a wish to counteract this trend somewhat.

I was going to post a picture of my desk at home, but the picture itself is horrifying and reveals to me how far I need to rationalise this flat. I might even need to put it on the market soon - and several of the doors haven't been painted since I installed them five years ago, let alone the skirting boards. It's also misleading - the mead bottle by the monitor is there because I put it there weeks ago absent-mindedly, not because I write best under the influence of alcohol.

I'm sitting in the flat now, having initially intended to be at the post-finals party for RW. I hope that the SocT youngsters (a lot of them are finishing finals about now) are having a good time, probably on RW's lawn playing Brockian Ultra-Croquet. Let the sunshine play on them for as long as they want it.

The problem with my present job is that it is basically a cult which appealed to the fannish core of my soul. I'm not surprised that most of my former colleagues took months and months to find new jobs, because after TGW, I think a certain amount of deprogramming might be required, ideally not including a new all-encompassing job straight away - but I doubt that, economically, I can take the risk.