Carpenter for a day

When I checked into high school, I was thrown into all manner of things. Got drafted into the choir. Military style draft. No choice in the matter at all. Being in the choir in an all boy school isn't the coolest thing I didn't think. But when you're a mono you do as you're told. More drafts followed. Mara I was playing volleyball every other Tuesday. I used to stand there as the ball was being tossed back and forth wondering what I was doing there. I was clearly no good at it. I mean if you were any good your arms wouldn't hurt every time you tried to hit the ball. Either I had the wrong technique or these other guys had arms made of steel.

And it went on like that. You get handed some page long thing to recite [you have to cram it first] for some competition. Elocution they called it. And it's in swa so you don't even know what half the words mean. Cramming stuff you don't understand is hard. It's why I've always preferred science/logic/discrete stuff. Either you know or you don't. Why I chose a course which needed a cluster of Maths, Physics, Chem and Georg. Used to flunk literature like nobody's business. Like this poem we did in the pre-mock exam in form four. I had no clue what the thing was about. How anybody could know what the thing was about. And whatever the teacher decided was the correct answer I was sure I could argue any other's case. It could have been about aliens it was so ambiguous. Or maybe it was just me. Then there was poetry in swa. Haaa. The phrase "seeing dust" comes to mind. What the ChinaMan used to call "kufunikwa". During the mock exams I was one of those who got a bonus. He was a nice old man the swa teacher. He felt for those of us who got zero, so he gave us one [bonus] mark. Angalau. It was circled or something to differentiate it from those who had actually got something right. I figured then that any degree course that had English/Kiswahili as a requirement wasn't for me. Fitting then that I ended up as a programmer.

Before you know it, you've become an excellent gardener, can mop a floor like a pro, sing, dance. OK. Dance was voluntary so I never did that. Besides, I had choir so I went for trips already. Which is the only reason anyone joined dance. Play volleyball, even though it still hurts, football, hockey, act in plays and get sent around a lot. Not sure if that last one counts as a "thing" but it sure swallowed up a large chunk of time. You're doing so many things you don't have time to think. No time to read either for CATs that come at you like bumps in the road when you're going too fast. No time to linger, or get bored. Or get homesick or stressed. Which, looking back, was a good thing.

One of the reasons I've gotten all flustered at the jobs I've had is the fact that after a couple of months, novelty is lost. Sure, you may have more work to do as time goes by and all sorts of deadlines always looming over your head and the same kind of time pressures. No time basically. But you're generally doing the same kind of thing. What if one day a week you made tables or something. What if you didn't do one job but 5. Now that would be something. Should be interesting if not anything else. You may not be an expert at any of those things, but a lot of things people do tend to be routine such that there's little difference between someone who's been in a position for 10 years and some newbie just out of campus. It helps when you leave one set of concerns behind, even if another set checks in. There were [many] days when I would be on the pitch in the evening knowing that I had a CAT that evening and I had not read or revised or whatever. Nothing. And I would happily get on with it. For those 2 hours nothing about books would get into my head, and even though I would be murdered by the physics paper afterwards, it didn't stress me. Perhaps what I needed so as not to get all stressed out and depressed about work was a hobby. Or like my boss kept suggesting, that I get married. Or get a [nagging] chic, like 0.5 offered. Maybe. It's the same principle I guess. Something different to put your mind to.