I'm thinking I need to make a new design for my website. It's still using the current theme which I basically stole (for want of a better word!) from Keith Szlamp's old site. I originally did it as a sort of homáge, and to give anyone who remembers his site a bit of a wry smile. Keith, if you're reading this, I'll change it to something original soon, honest :) I think the main reason I haven't changed it is that I'm hanging onto the idea that The Dice haven't really gone away forever, and while they're still lurking on my homepage, some of the magic is still alive.

Not ecstatic at work at the moment, as I've had to be wearing my project manager hat for the past week, and haven't feel like I've done anything technical for ages. Think I'm going to play around with one of the as/400 systems this afternoon before I forget how to actually do anything.

Have you ever had a relationship where you start to realise that you've just completely grown apart from that person? I've been thinking a lot about some of my relationships lately, and I've realised that with some either myself or the other people (well, ok, me) have grown into slightly different people, and we don't seem to have the things in common that we did. One of the resolutions I made to myself in the last couple of months is that I'd start concentrating more on myself and what I want to do, rather than my old habit of doing everything anyone else wanted even if it's not what I wanted to do. I've also conciously avoided doing or saying I wanted if I think other people might not agree or be upset.

A downside to my easy-going nature and constant desire to not have awkward or confrontational situations has usually meant in the past I'll always end up putting myself last. I think a small part of this was also the universal desire to be liked.

Something I've realised recently is that I can be more honest, and true to what I want, and people will still like me. Hell, some people actually respect you more for it.

Of course, some people won't like you for it. As I've seen from some of the comments I've had from my Q4T posts, some actively dislike you for it, but at least you get an emotional response, and it allows you to filter out the sort of people that you like to be around.

This kind of brings me back to my point - Now that I've adopted this slightly more selfish (I dislike that word as I don't really consider myself selfish, it's just I wasn't really selfish enough I suppose) attitude, I've realised that some of the relationships I have just aren't really working. I think some of the things I think we had in common were just probably a facet of me wanting to please everyone. That, and the fact that the people in question don't seem to have changed at all in the last 10 years, and I find myself not content with the same things I used to be.

I suppose I'm growing up..

Pb