Darling happy anniversary

Another milestone, and it makes building up a blog history all the more attractive. A sense of perspective may be imparted by comparing one's current state of mind to that recorded in the past, as I'm sure Proust must once have said. I only wish I had been keeping this thing years before I actually did. About 25 years, to be exact.

It is now 12 months since I started my current job, and, reading back over my post a year ago, it's revoltingly cliched (not the post, I hasten to add, but the sentiment I'm about to speak of) but L.P. Hartley's opening salvo from the Go-Between rings true.

As for the future... I've often thought of using the game of Brick Breaker on the Blackberry as some kind of metaphor for management skills. There are countless decisions to be made in each game - go for the little rolling 'laser' barrel and risk the ball dropping off the bottom of the screen, or play conservative and miss the bonus? And, er, that's it. Apart from the fact that there are some seriously mad people playing this game. Apparently, as the Blackberry is mostly used by people in IT and in management, the game of Brick Breaker - and the incredibly sad community of people who have been playing a single game of it for several months (!) - attracts a certain type of clientele. So maybe not such a great idea for a concept after all then. I could have sworn that it had more legs than that the last time I sat on the tube clicking the little paddle back and forth. Ah well.

Perhaps a more apposite - though admittedly somewhat hackneyed - metaphor for life in the corporate jungle would be the greatest game of all. Chess. A game where I am far from the greatest player of all, despite years of practice and the odd library book. I even used to watch those programmes on BBC2 (The Master Game with Nigel Short, as my extensive research has revealed) during the Garry Kasparov/Bobby Fischer golden years, but was never really able to fully grasp the tactics. Thanks to one of those library books, I was always pretty reasonable in the opening stages (except when I suffered Fool's Mate against the teacher my first time at the school Chess Club when I was 13 or so. A very public, very nerdy, humiliation it was too. Come to think of it, this was just another example of the sadism displayed by many of those who have taught me. Did he really need to prove himself against such a callow youth? Anyway, no point in dwelling on these things, I suppose) with my Nimzo-Indian defence and some good knight work. I always fade miserably however in the middle and end-game, and am invariably left scratching my head as to what to do, leading to silly mistakes and the ultimate slow death.

Which kind of sums up where I am now, professionally speaking. Head on chin, staring at a multitude of options ahead of me and unsure as to what my next move should be. No doubt I'll be concentrating on the bishop and won't notice that I've left my queen horribly exposed. Or perhaps I'll just carry on with Brick Breaker and see if I can best my top score of 14,240, which now seems horribly inadequate also.

We shall see.