Stephen

One Street: Market Square, Shipley #55

Thanks for your support and advice. I've felt incredibly flat this last few days, which I'm sure is just the result of too many hours spent on things from which I'm deriving no satisfaction. I was reflecting on this on my cycle home. We work at our best and get the most satisfaction from a job when we are completely engaged with what we are doing. This means the task being challenging enough to be interesting but not so challenging that it becomes overwhelming. I guess that for most of my working life I've been in that zone, working on stuff which has pushed me intellectually but never to the extent that I haven't been able to cope.

When I started out in the software development business I think my threshold for dealing with the mundane was quite high. I was also able to deal with extremely complex stuff too - like writing computer games directly in assembly language with no debugging tools to help find the errors. I was able to focus on the very boring and the very challenging with the same efficiency. There was a large window where I would find myself engaged with my work.

As I've got older, though, I find my tolerance for the mundane stuff has diminished. I find it really hard to focus on tedious tasks. The mind wanders way too easily which means that silly mistakes get made, which in turn means the job takes longer and I become even more disenchanted. Also, I find that my ability to deal with the complicated stuff has also diminished. Once a certain level of complexity is reached I find it impossible to focus on the problem as a whole. If I try to break it down into pieces my short-term memory isn't good enough to hold them all in my head. There are many problems now which I find impenetrable to the degree that my attention just bounces straight off them. I get distracted almost immediately because I cannot find a point of focus. There is now only a tiny window where I find myself engaged with my work. Quite simply, most of what I do is either too easy or too hard. There seems to be very little middle ground where I can become absorbed and derive some satisfaction.

Although the desire to find photographs each day has waned a little, it's still not hard to get a blip. There is never a shortage of people to talk to at lunchtime on Market Square. Stephen here likened the feel of Shipley to a village, with everyone knowing each other very well. He said that he didn't know so many of the younger people but guessed that he probably would know their parents. It's that kind of place. People stay. He was rather taken with the fact that I was recording the life of the Square here, and its people. He was certainly more than happy to be archived himself. Indeed, he insisted!