Friday June 10th, 2022

The exercise:

Write four lines of prose about: shifting gears.

Was mostly able to sit back and let my replacement finish up the compiling and publishing of the agendas today. Which also allowed me to focus a little more on my new duties.

It's going to be a mental adjustment leaving my old job behind. Gives me a new perspective on how things went when I was first training to do it.

2 comments:

Greg said...

I am quite interested to hear about the new perspective you have on the job now you're training someone else to do it! I know that there's always elements of 'oh this is important though I never really think about it because it's automatic' and sometimes you find yourself being asked 'why do we do this' and realising that you never asked that question yourself so you don't have a (good) answer. I think I've always ended up with a few 'I was told to do this but I never have' sections too, but maybe I'm just not very good at my jobs....

Shifting gears
Cliff shifted gear, hearing the click of the bicycle's chain as it moved from one chainring to the next, and the pedalling suddenly seemed to have a little more bite to it as though he was somehow gripping the world around him a little more tightly. He sped up naturally and allowed himself a tense little smile knowing that while Jansson might be ahead of him at the moment, he was definitely catching him. He lifted his head, just a little so as not to throw off his aerodynamics too much to try and catch a glimpse of Jansson and was startled to see that the lead cyclist appeared to be shifting gears himself.
"That's got to be cheating," muttered Cliff as Jansson's bike started whining as an afterburner kicked in and Jansson (and his bike) disappeared in a blue-white flash of light.

Marc said...

Greg - oh no, I definitely have those parts of training. The only choice is whether to admit that to the new hire or let them discover it on their own when somebody asks them why a particular something hasn't been done...

I'm, uh, maybe 50/50 on that one.

Mostly what I was referring to in this post though was that I've grown to understand how hard it was for the person that trained me to let go of the job and let me fully take over. It's an interesting process that is satisfying to get right and the process of pulling an agenda into the finished project is something I enjoyed more than I had realized, I think.

Quite enjoyed your opening description, particularly now that I've started biking to work. And that ending... well, I have to admit there have been moments when I've spotted other bikes during my commute and was convinced they had an afterburner or something equivalent working for them.