The best nine minutes

Every Monday to Friday at 7am my alarm goes off. I religiously set it to snooze and nine minutes later it goes off again; I get out of bed, shower, break my fast and hop into my car for a one hour crawl to work.

The hour in traffic is the least enjoyable part of the day, possibly because of the immediate and shocking contrast with the first nine minutes.

However, for the first nine minutes I like to snuggle over beside my wife and just breath in her scent. No matter what happens in my day, it can't take away that first nine minutes.

She can kill with a smile
She can wound with her eyes
She can ruin your faith with her casual lies
And she only reveals what she wants you to see
She hides like a child,
But she's always a woman to me

She can lead you to love
She can take you or leave you
She can ask for the truth
But she'll never believe
And she'll take what you give her, as long as it's free
Yeah, she steals like a thief
But she's always a woman to me

Oh--she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh--and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind

And she'll promise you more
Than the Garden of Eden
Then she'll carelessly cut you
And laugh while you're bleedin'
But she'll bring out the best
And the worst you can be
Blame it all on yourself
Cause she's always a woman to me

Oh--she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh--and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind

She is frequently kind
And she's suddenly cruel
She can do as she pleases
She's nobody's fool
And she can't be convicted
She's earned her degree
And the most she will do
Is throw shadows at you
But she's always a woman to me

Billy Joel "She's always a woman"

Don't burn your bridges

I can imagine some medieval King telling his soldiers as they march through enemy land "burn the bridges behind us to stop the enemy using them" and then being destroyed later when they need to retreat across one. Of course, if you build you bridges well, they never get burnt to begin with.

It looks like I may be returning to work at Author-it after a two year break.

The strange thing is, I'm happy where I am, but I don't feel the same sense of satisfaction I used to get working at Author-it. I imagine I'll start doing crazy hours again, but somehow it felt less like work than what I'm doing now. There is something that I truly enjoy about business analyst work; the process of discovery, the gap analysis and the solution. Hopefully, cunningly simple, blindingly fast and elegant.

The only thing I'm not looking forward to is telling my current employers that I'm leaving. It's a good company and if I'd started working there five years ago I think I would have made a good run of it. Unfortunately, I don't know the product as well as I'd like and I'm sitting between people who know it in the production process. This slows things down and as I've never been the slow turning cog before it's a new and unpleasant feeling.

Hopefully, the experience of having been the slow cog will make me a better person; and hopefully, I'll never experience it again as long as I live.