This blog looks to be in grave danger of becoming an orphan; no writer to care for it, only the occasional glance in from human readers and data mining bots as they continue moving swiftly on to other digital destinations, only Google’s server farm keeping it from sinking into the digital abyss. A blogging pause has happened here before, of course, as noted in my Blogging State Of the Union post from October 2012.  I’ve again not posted here for several months, obviously because nothing of interest has happened to me in that time.

Perhaps that’s right. The day-to-day has been pretty overwhelming and I’ve found that whilst trying to keep my engineering blog a little more lively, there’s simply not been the headroom, or quiet time, or energy to work on this here blog. But what about the content? Has that been lacking, too? Thankfully, I think not.

What have I been up to since Shanghai? Well, I played in another symphony orchestra concert (Gershwin, Shostakovitch and Rachmaninov’s 3rd Symphony). I remixed a Jamiroquai track for their 20th anniversary remix competition, we were served notice and had to find a new house to live in, I started jogging again… and again…, I worked, and took part in general family life.

Over the Easter holidays, I enjoyed visits to the Steim Automuseum and to the Deutsche Phonographisches Museum - which I will describe in another post - and I worked.

So, lots of excuses not to keep this blog ticking over: many of those excuses could easily have been made into entries in this online diary of mine, building up my insignificant history, for as long as the Blogger servers and HTML continue…

…anyway, enough mulling and pondering, enough slumping into sofas, and onwards with the writing!

I returned to work yesterday after two months off on paternity leave following Emily’s birth in July. Those two months of wearing shorts, not trousers, T-shirts not shirts were (Emily’s virus aside) wonderful.

Towards the end of my leave, I started thinking about and investigating the world of work again - discovering interesting buzzwords like “social enterprise” and “curation” brought up concepts that I was keen to try to implement in our office. I also checked my work emails to make sure that I wasn’t going to be overwhelmed when I got back.

Whilst checking up on my work emails from home, I noticed a slight reaction of repulsion as soon as I saw a drawing of one of our tube products - this continued when I returned to being “live” at work, too. It’s not the greatest sign for motivation, although the holiday blues are bound to be at work. I fear my lofty ideas will not survive being dragged down to the product level, into the muck and brass of a metal-forming automotive supplier’s life; yet it is at this product level that these lofty concepts need to work, and work seamlessly. Without the product, concepts remain simply that; nebulous ideas.

So - my challenge is to compartmentalise the day-to-day grit (quality complaints, validation testing, drawings updates) into chunks of “done” and to leave myself time, room and mental energy to devote to improving the way that we work. Whilst also giving myself some time to get back home to enjoy my family life.

It is a battle - improving our communication, knowledge distribution and search capabilities can improve work itself - but I do feel that ‘loving’ the product would make it one battle more easily fought.